Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to our first reading, Psalm 103
and reading for our text, verse 8. Psalm 103 and verse 8. The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. Psalm 103 and verse 8. Our text, it speaks of God's
character and how he is towards his dear people. We read, The Lord is merciful
and gracious. But then we also read that He
is slow to anger and plenteous. in mercy. We could have someone
that was very merciful or described as merciful but not actually
bestowing that mercy in a very plentiful way. But we have it
here that he is plenteous in mercy. However, we need to understand
the lines that the Lord works in, the background upon which
His mercy is placed. Perhaps if we were to use an
illustration of a doctor, And we might say a doctor is a very
gentle, a very merciful character. But what his job is to do is
to, in effect, a healing and a cure. And sometimes it might
be doing things that are painful, giving medicines that are bitter,
and they're not given because he's not merciful. they are given with the aim of
curing and actually given in mercy but they are painful and
they are difficult to walk in and so we must remember how the
Lord is working before sinful men in the world as it is and
in gospel days and with an aim not just for temporal blessing
but for eternal blessings and so thinking of that I want
to look first this evening at his appointments what God has
actually appointed that will happen and will come to pass
and within those appointments We will then see He is displayed
as a merciful and as a gracious God. Secondly, I want to look at His
character as described here, as merciful and gracious. And then lastly, how He is toward
His people, how they view it on the receiving end, of the
Lord's mercies and knowing His character, how we actually perceive
that. So firstly, His appointments,
those things that God has said that they will come to pass,
they will take place, and nothing will change that. the fact that
they do take place don't impinge upon His mercy or His grace. And the first one is this, the
appointment of death. We read it is appointed unto
men once to die and then after death the judgment. Now we must
remember that when sin entered into the world it entered into
the world under the law. And the Lord had said to our
first parents in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt
surely die. And that sentence, that must
be carried out. If it could be said with the
law of the Medes and the Persians, that altereth not, that the decree
that King Ahasuerus made couldn't be changed, that a day was set
when the enemies of the Jews would rise up against them to
destroy them, that day had to stand. It could be counteracted
as it was, but it had to stand. The decree of Darius that whosoever
made petition to another god apart from the king during 30
days would be cast into the burning fiery furnace, that must take
place. Daniel must go down into the
den and be brought up again. That could not be changed. And you might say, well, what
if Darius had been known as a very merciful and gracious and long-suffering
king, but once he'd made that decree, and that decree couldn't
be changed, you might say, well, his mercy and his feeling for
Daniel was shown in not sleeping all night and in prayer and intercession
all night and fasting. But it had to be within those
lines, and so death must come. God had said it would. The sentence
must be carried out. He is a just God, a holy God,
a righteous God. and cannot just say, well that
didn't matter, that won't happen now, because I'm merciful and
gracious, we'll just forget all of that. No, it's within those
guidelines in the presence of death. And so along with that
comes all sicknesses, comes all the infirmities of the body,
the slowly taking down of the body in a gradual way, down to
the grave. And of course those of us who've
got loved ones that we've seen come to old age and infirmity
or those of us who go into the Pilgrim or Bethesda homes and
we see those that years ago they ministered with us in the Word
and they were full of strength and vigour and yet we see them
a fraction of themselves just so taken down and we think well
this is what God has appointed and we have it in Ecclesiastes
12 with the slow effect of the infirmities of the body being
known in various ways that all remind us that one day death
shall come the various parts of our body
shall fail And so that is an appointment that cannot, won't
be changed. And we need to remember that
in whatever afflictions and changes and infirmities we have, we are
heading by God's appointment to the grave. Thus thou art,
and unto dust shalt thou return. The other appointment is that
of tribulation, and again it is bound up with sin being in
the world. Our Lord said, In me ye shall
have peace, but in the world ye shall have tribulation. And the apostles, they comforted
the disciples who were already in tribulation, and they comforted
them by saying that ye must, through much tribulation, enter
the kingdom. And so they reaffirmed, really,
what you are going through, the tribulations, the trials, and
what you are experiencing, are part of God's appointments. Don't
let Satan say, you look at that tribulation, you look at what
you're going through, how can God be merciful? How can He be
gracious? But you remind him this is one
of God's appointments. This is what we as poor, fallen,
sinful wretches in this sin-cursed world must expect here below. Another one of His appointments
is a path that is appointed. Our lives, including those tribulations,
are not just arbitrary, they're not just something that happens,
but God has appointed it in every particular. Sometimes He foretells
His people what shall happen. He told Abraham that his seed
should be a stranger in a strange land, that they should be afflicted,
and after four hundred years, when the fourth generation, they
would be brought hither again, back into Canaan. But God didn't
tell him how it would come to pass. And yet he knew, he knew
that there was to be the famine appointed in Jacob's day. He knew how Joseph was to be
sent, and Joseph later on was able to say to his brethren,
God, ye sent me not hither, but God, to save your lives by a
great deliverance. That means of bringing them down
into Egypt and preserving them alive in the time of that famine
that was in all lands, that was appointed by God. It might be hard as we're walking
through it, and hard for Joseph as he's walking through it. We
read that, until his time came, the word of the Lord tried him,
but to see the Lord as a merciful and gracious God. But it must
be within these lines that Providence unfolds the book, makes his counsel
shine. And there are paths that are
to be walked, as Joseph did, as Job did, to confound Satan,
to prove him a liar. When he said, you touch all that
Job hath, and he would turn round, he would curse thee to thy face. So the Lord gave permission,
and all things were touched. But Job didn't curse the Lord.
We think of John the Baptist, appointed, told, foretold, in
the scriptures, a voice crying in the wilderness, and to go
before the Lord, make his path straight. Well, he also has an appointed
path and ministry, and when it is finished, his life ends at
the whim of a girl dancing before Herod, and his head is cut off
in the prison without hardly any warning at all. those appointments
are God's appointment that He works in in appointing the path
for His people and some of His people as they begin to walk
it like Moses did or Gideon or Jeremiah they feel how weak they
are they're like children and they're not up to what is being
set before them but the Lord's appointed it and they'll find
out as Moses did The Lord went before him and proclaimed his
goodness and mercy. He was a merciful God in those
appointments, within them. And so it's important to see
those lines that the Lord is working in and showing forth
his character. We think of another appointment,
and that is especially for his children, uniquely His children,
and that is that when they forsake His ways, when they turn aside,
then He will chasten them, He will correct them. Now, no chastening,
we read in Hebrews 12, for the present is joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth
the peaceable fruit of righteousness. to them that are exercised thereby. So we see again another guideline
that runs right through history that all the saints of old knew
that we will know if we are the people of God and those to the
end of the time will know as well that God will chasten his
dear children. The children of Israel knew what
it was. not just in the wilderness, but
in the Promised Land. They knew the times that they
were brought into captivity, and especially the time in Babylon. But the Lord said, I've sent
them into Babylon for their good. And yet we've read in the Lamentations
of Jeremiah and all what Jeremiah saw of the devastations in Jerusalem. The Lord's appointments. And David knew it, of course,
when he sinned in the matter of Uriah and Bathsheba, and the
sword was not to depart from his house, he was to have trouble
in his house. And that decree and that appointment
would stand, but within that, within that being carried out,
he would also prove and see the Lord to be merciful and gracious. And so, dear friends, may you
look at what is your lot and what you're passing through.
And before you start, or Satan starts to suggest that the Lord
isn't merciful, He isn't gracious, that you discern, well, what
are we looking at? Are we looking at the appointments
themselves? or are we looking at how the
Lord is dealing within those appointments and how He is acting
within those guidelines that we might say the Lord has set
Himself but the Lord will not break through at the expense
of His justice and His holiness and righteousness because these
guidelines They also are what He works within as well. And so when He is to provide
mercy, able to show mercy, He must do it in a way that is consistent,
again, with His appointments and with His own character. And that, of course, really centers
in all that was done at Calvary in the life of our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. So maybe understand first, and
you may think of other appointments as well, or perhaps other illustrations
in paths that are appointed, that the Lord works within, and
certainly we think of the word in wrath, remember mercy dear
friends that go through very severe paths of tribulation,
but find in those paths mercies and helps within those paths. And that's what we are to look
for. We look a bit at the third point
on that aspect. But let us look then, secondly,
at the character of the Lord Himself. What is His character? Our text says the Lord is merciful
and gracious, and you'll notice that Lord is spelled with capital
letters, that is Jehovah, that is God the Father, God the Son
and God the Holy Ghost. We must never think that God
the Father is an angry judge, and that the son is one that
is merciful and gracious and pacifies the anger of his father
and somehow see there's a difference within the Godhead. Remember
that our Lord said to the disciples, my father or your father himself
loveth you." Very important to remember that. We have a beautiful
illustration when Abraham was to take his son and to take him
up upon Mount Moriah because God had commanded him to do so. And by faith he believed even
if his son was to be slain, because the promise was upon him, God
would raise him from the dead. We're told that in Hebrews. But
when God provided the Lamb as a substitute, He said, Because
thou hast not withheld thy Son, thine only Son, from thee. In blessing I will bless thee,
and in thee and in thy seed shall all nations be blessed, and thy
seed is Christ. And Paul makes that clear when
writing to the Galatians. the love of God sending His only
begotten Son. God commendeth His love toward
us, in that while we were sinners Christ died for us. And the choice,
the everlasting choice chosen in Christ before the foundation
of the world We find God setting His love upon a people for no
reason in them whatsoever, just sovereignly choosing them. Jacob have I loved, Esau have
I hated, not for anything that they've done, good or evil, before
they were born, not the purposes of God according to election.
Here we have again the channel in which God works. But we have
God set forth before us in the Father as a merciful and a gracious
Father, a Father that will love His Son and yet will do that
with His Son, that is consistent with the true worship of God
and the need that was, that without the shedding of blood there is
no remission. The character of God is shown
in the offices that were given to the Son. The very name, He
shall save His people from their sins, a Saviour. The fact that
He is to be a sympathising High Priest, that He shall walk out
and through the path that His people walked, that His office
in Heaven is that of our Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
the Righteous. You know, if we were looking
at someone that was described as merciful and gracious, and
that they were making these provisions, we would see in those provisions
what their character was. If we had a nation and we saw
the provisions that they were making, maybe stockpiling weapons,
building up armory, making defences, we'd look at those things that
they were doing and we were thinking, well, these are rather hostile
actions that they're doing. But with God we see the opposite
in that. We see the provision of the Lord
Jesus Christ as one that is to convey mercy, supply the needs
of a people, and then further in that the, I will give you
pastors according to mine own heart, the work of the Holy Spirit,
to give the inspired, infallible Word of God, so that men may
have the Word of God, they may know His will. The Lord gave
the Word, great was the company of them that published it. And
those things that are actually put in place and done, even before
personally known in a sinner, is showing the intentions of
God. showing what His character is. Really, if we even went right
to the Garden of Eden, and we see Adam and Eve, and how quickly
is God's character of mercy and grace shown towards them. They're not cut off straight
away. They're given life, they're given the promise of the seed
of the woman that should bruise the serpent's head. Yes, the
sentence is executed and they're driven from the garden and spiritually
they die. But the Lord kills the animals,
He provides the blood, He provides the covering, better covering
than their fig leaves. And of course that's pointing
to the righteousness of Christ. And so it's those things that
are done. We are told in the Word of God,
as we have in our text, the Lord is merciful and gracious. And the things that He has put
in place, in place so that He can show mercy and show grace
and save sinners, they reinforce that. They strengthen that message
and that idea. You know, the Holy Spirit is
to be the remembrancer. He is told the Spirit of truth.
It is through the Spirit and through the grace of the Lord
that the Lord is with His people until the end of the world. That
very character of the Lord. And when we think, what is mercy? Mercy can never, ever be deserved. We think of the publican, God
be merciful to me, a sinner. It is leaving out works, it's
leaving out anything that we can merit. A well-known example
of a lady that was seeking some clemency for her son who was
in the army and due to be court-martialed, and she pleaded for mercy for
him. And the commanding officer, he
said, he doesn't deserve mercy. She said, if he deserved it,
it would not be mercy. Mercy is not deserved. Gracious,
what is grace? The free unmerited favor of God
in the face of active demerit. Kindness is when we might be
kind to someone, give them something, but if they then came back and
they threw it in our face and were cross with us, angry with
us, unthankful for us, and we still gave it to them and we
still helped them, That would be what grace is. Grace is more
than kindness. And if we know our own hearts
and we know our own sin, we'll know our need of grace. The Apostle
tells the Ephesians, by grace ye are saved through faith and
that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. Faith
is the gift of God. And so those attributes of the
Lord, the Lord is merciful and gracious, is set right through
the Word of God as what is actually belonging to Him as a character. Maybe if we put it and contrasted
it with something else, what if it was
said The Lord is a tyrant. The Lord is terrible and changeable
and fearsome. You know sometimes that you can
have a man like Nabal who Abigail said to David that he is such
a man that you cannot speak to him. He's a fool but as such
as a character you wouldn't speak to him. I remember it was said
of the late pastor over in New Zealand, because I only knew
him when he was called by grace. But even then, he was a very
imposing man. He could be quite intimidating. But you could talk to him. But
my friend, he said, well, you should have known him before
he was called by grace. He said there was a man, he was
working as a pastor, he was a foreman in a motor mechanics. And he
said this man did something wrong and rather than face up to him,
he ran away, he wouldn't come back to his workplace. You know, if a man has that kind
of a reputation, very the opposite to what is here. And we need
to really think of this as the Lord is set forth before us in
the Word of God and that then is transposed into how it is
perceived or shown by the people of God. Do they give the same
echo and the same witness when the Word says, the Lord is merciful
and gracious and we find it, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Do God's people with united voice
say, Amen, He is, I approved it so, I've seen it so, within
the path and guidelines that are appointed here below and
as sinners. I want to then look then at the
third point, and that is the way that God's people perceive
Him. How is He towards His people? Well, we have in the verses that
follow our text, really a beautiful opening up of this, especially
in our text, loads of anger and plenty of in mercy, not just,
say with reverence, stingy with mercy, but plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide, that
is, express anger or disappointment, complain, it says in the Margin
of Bibles, neither will he keep his anger forever, He hath not
dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded
us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above
the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him. As
far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions
from us. Like as a father pitieth his
children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame, he
remembereth that we are dust. I wonder how many of us could
give a cent from personal experience in this. What really is vital
in it is knowing what we deserve. As soon as we start measuring
the mercy of God upon a level of what we deserve, out of a
deserved hell, then we start to find very few mercies. When we think that God owes us
something and that we are deserving of better than what we have. But if we are rightly taught,
and if the Lord has shown us what we are, then we will see
mercy. And in one sense that is a balance,
is a proof of how the Lord has dealt with us, because by nature
we're proud. We're proud, we're rebellious,
we'll say we will not have this man to rule over us. One of the
hymns says, that nor are men willing to have the truth told
the sight is too killing for pride to behold and it is there
are those that will take up with religion until they hear a minister
describe what the heart of man is like and then they'll rebel
against those I'm not that bad I'm not such a sinner like that
But where the Lord shows in the light of His holiness and purity,
and shows us really what we are, that all our righteousnesses,
that's all our good works, are as filthy rags. that in thought,
in word, in deed, we are nothing but sin and disgrace, full of
wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, no soundness in us because
of our sin. O wretched man that I am, says
the Apostle, who shall deliver me from this body of death? One
of the ways that I have proved the Lord so softened my heart,
you know, I've looked for When I found my heart so hard and
so rebellious and so far off from the Lord, and I've thought,
well, the Lord's going to so deal with me. There's going to
be so much affliction and things go wrong. His rod will be upon
me. And I've known really what I've
deserved. And the Lord's turned around
and He's given me mercy, and He's shown kindness. And that
has so broken my heart, it's softened me down. I've looked
for wrath and yet had mercy. I've looked for what I knew I
deserved. and the Lord has not given us
that, and so when we read here that He has not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded
us according to our iniquities, Is this your experience? It certainly
has been mine. And I know the dear saints of
God, through time, they have felt the same. And they have
had no complaints as to the Lord's dealings and what He has done
with them. Especially when, looking back,
as dear Joseph did, yes, we may be tried through it, and rightly
we should be exercised and tried. But even in those trials, there
are mercies mixed with it. There are kindnesses that are
mixed with it. I remember one time, years ago,
the Lord was pleased to give me a most solemn lesson, really. And it was one of those times
that, I think it was one of the first times, that I saw the Lord's
teaching that was not for any temporal, providential good whatsoever,
but begun and ended with just spiritual profit. As if the Lord
would say, Roland, I'm going to teach you, and I'm going to
teach you through this what I'm going to bring you in. And it's
not for anything else but for my love for you and to teach
you spiritually. Because how it began, and I was
a draftsman, a mechanical draftsman, and in those days we were using
the board, it's not working on a screen as we do today. And
so set squares, pens, all of that sort of thing, the drafting
equipment, I needed that. Well, I didn't need it. I had.
I had all of those things. But as I was sitting in my lounge
room, I looked in the local paper, and someone was advertising drawing
equipment. And I felt a prompting, I've
got to go and have a look at those, see if I can get there.
Why did I feel that? I didn't need them at all. And
so they were quite near to it, only about a mile and a half
or so from my home. So I went to this chap and he
got them there. And I, so mercilessly, I just
beat him down. I got them for half the price
or so he was asking. You see, I could have just left
it. I didn't really need them. And
so I just dealt with him in that way. And after he'd agreed to
sell them to me, he told me why he was selling them. And he said
that he'd been married, and he'd built this house that we were
standing in. And because he'd spent so much
time building it himself, he hadn't spent time with his wife,
and his wife had felt left neglected, she ran off with another man
and she filed with divorce and she wanted to get half of the
house that he'd built and he was desperately selling everything
that he could to get enough money to buy that house back so that
all the work he'd spent on it, he hadn't lost that as well as
his wife. There's no curtains at the windows, there's nothing
on the floor, it was just a bare house And he was selling even
the instruments he'd used to draw the house up. And I just reduced what I was going to pay
him. And I felt terrible. And I thought,
how can I talk to him of the gospel? How can I comfort him
in his sorrow that he's had? I paid for the things, I went
home, and I sat in my lounge chair and I looked at my curtains
and the carpet and all I'd had, and I felt worse and worse and
worse. What had I done? How had I acted
in such a way? So in the morning, I had a whole
lot of spare curtains, I got them all up, I put double money
in an envelope, And I put one of, I think it was one of Mr.
Ansbotter's books, Bible Doctrine Simply Explained, and probably
a little Bible in as well, and bagged it all up, and went and
left this on this man's veranda, and really apologized and confessed
how wrong I'd been to so beat him down like that, and take
from him what which he had, which he so needed the money. But you
know that day it was pelting with rain and I had gone a different
way to work out of my way just to drop this off. So from then
I joined my usual route to work on roads I wasn't that familiar
with. That was close to home. And I'd
not long had this car, it was a Sigma, it had a beautiful thing,
you know, the Rolls Royce have on the bonnet, long bonnet it
had, and I could see this thing, I was mighty proud of this car. Anyway, I came up to this brow
of the hill, went over the brow of the hill, and suddenly all
the cars were stopped in front. And I jammed on the brakes and
just sailed straight into the back of this panel van. It was
a strong van, but it smashed. I just put my foot, just waited
for the impact. And I knew why. I knew why the
Lord had bought her. But you know, I started to count
my blessings. The van that I hit, that wasn't
damaged at all. The people I hit were very kind
and friendly towards me they could have been really angry
and what's more the car was still drivable there was about 10 inches
between the front grill and the radiator and it hadn't smashed
it right back to that but it hadn't smashed the radiator and
what's more I was able to still drive on to work and I was able
to panel beat in those days that Sigma had I think about eight
parts to the front bumper and I could panel beat it out and
I got everything out and that car looked quite nice except
for one crinkle on the front bonnet and that nice insignia
was gone. and it stayed gone. I wouldn't
replace it. I thought the Lord dealt the
blows of my pride like that at the same time as dealing with
disobedience and walking in a contrary way. And the other blessing,
of course, I wasn't injured. The people I hit weren't injured.
No one was injured. And the guidelines, God would
chasten. He would deal with me. But there
were so many mercies that were thrown in with it. Agasai, he
had not dealt with me. It was my sin. But I saw the
Lord began that experience. And he finished it. And there
was teaching in it. Prophet for me, humbling, humbling
teaching. But there was mercies in it.
And so, where he smites, I think one of the hymns says, the lash
is steeped, he only lays. yet softened in His blood. And this is why we see the mercy
in it, because we see what we do deserve. We taste the cup,
but then we're led to view what Christ has done. In Psalm 80, we read, Let thy
hand be upon the man at thy right hand, the Son of Man, whom thou
madest strong for thyself. And we see that the Lord has
borne the wrath of God. His sacrifice is a propitiation
for sin. It is a wrath-ending sacrifice. The wrath of God fell on Him,
so that it doesn't fall upon us. His mercy is a blood-bought
mercy. It's not mercy that we might
show to someone, and we have a very vivid example in the Word
of God, where Ahab showed mercy to Ben-Hadad. And Ben-Hadad was
a man that had been appointed to utter destruction, and Ahab
let him go. And God said to him through his
prophets, Because thou hast let go a man that I appointed to
utter destruction, that thy life shall go for his life. But with the Lord in the beginning,
his life is given for the life of his people. That blood is
satisfied, the justice is satisfied, and so he then shows mercy to
his children. And so that is why when we walk
it out and we realise He has not dealt with us as our sins
have deserved, yet God is a just and holy God. Why? Why is there
this imbalance when we read in Proverbs again and again that
are just balances of the Lord? He hates a bag with diverse weights
so that when you go and buy a kilogram of flour you bring out your weight
and your weight weighs actually 1.1 kilograms and you weigh out
and you get more flour than you than you should have. Or if you
want to sell flour, you bring out your one kilogram weight,
but actually it only weighs 0.8 kilograms, so you part with less
flour. And the Lord is against that
terrible double dealing in that way. When the Lord demands a
full payment, He provides that full payment. And it's not for
part for you and I to make up the balance of what Christ has
not. Job was clearly told that his
goodness did not extend unto God. It might benefit man, like
we are, but not unto God. We cannot pay one atom towards
our debt. The Lord paid it all, and He'll
make known that He has done that by showing us that His justice
demands that there be justice. But we are shown mercy, and we
are shown the kindness and graciousness of God. And He deals with His
children, pities them, He knows our frame, knoweth our frame.
He remembereth that we are dust. Have we tasted that the Lord
is gracious? Have we known him? No, the Lord
told that parable of thee. I think it was with the talents
and the one that had buried it in the ground. He said, I knew
thee that thou wast a hard man. He didn't know the Lord at all.
If he was to say the Lord was a hard man, he never knew the
Lord. The Lord's people know Him as merciful and gracious
and long-suffering, of tender mercy. He is slow to anger. How patient He is with us. How
long He bears with His people. How He forbears with them. And
we get to know more. and more of what the Lord is
Himself. These are not just things separated
from Him, but they lead to Him. And they bring a poor sinner
to love Him, and to love what He has done for them that brings
those blessings down. Every blessing comes to us through
Jesus' precious blood. The Holy Spirit will never forbear
to show what Christ has done and why we are dealt with in
a merciful way. David feared at one time when
the Lord slew Uzzah because they weren't worshipping according
to the due order and it was kindness of the Lord to correct Israel,
to correct David, and to bring them back into the true and right
worship. But then when the ark was sent
to the house of Obed-Edom, then the Lord blessed the house of
Obed-Edom. And we have the balance. The
Lord's sovereign justice and mercy. And we must view that
sovereignty and humble before the sovereignty of God. It is
one of those appointments, one of those channels through which
the Lord works. I will have mercy upon whom I
will have mercy. He will show judgment upon those
that He will show judgment. Even the wicked have been made
for the day of wrath, and those things are appointed by God.
But His dear people to taste and to find the mercy of God,
running in the channels of the gospel, running in the way that
the Lord has appointed for a chosen, foreknown and foreloved people,
a people that He has formed for Himself, and they shall show
forth His praise. And they shall praise this, they
shall praise who He is, and for His dealings towards them, that
the Lord is merciful, and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous
in mercy. We have, and this is why we read
in the Lamentations, And dear Jeremiah must have seen so many
things, so distressing, and to the Lord's dear people, but it
was the time of the chastening of the Lord. It is of the Lord's
mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail
not. They are new every morning, great
is thy faithfulness. If Jeremiah could speak in this
way, and it was real trials, the earlier part of this chapter,
it shows it too. what he really went through,
what he really felt. But then he speaks of what the
Lord is, and he says, the Lord is my portion, and saith my soul,
therefore will I hope in him. The Lord is good unto them that
wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. And so then we have
later on, though he cause grief, yet, Will he have compassion
according to the multitude of his mercies? And there we have
the plenteous mercies again. And it is the mercies in the
confines of his causing grief because of chastening. Chastening
itself was a mark of love. He doth not afflict willingly,
nor breathe the children of men to crush under his feet all the
prisoners of the earth. That which is done is done because
it is appointed. And there's a needs be. It is
necessary. We read in Peter's epistles about
the fiery trial. If needs be that ye suffer, the
heaviness for a season, and that fire that tries, that burns up
the dross, that leaves the gold and leaves the silver, but it's
necessary and it's done in love. You think of Psalm 107, and all
that they went through, especially that spoken of those that go
down to the sea, do business in great waters, they rise up
to the heaven, down again to the depths, they reel to and
fro, stagger like a drunken man, they fall down, there's none
to help, then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He
delivereth them out of their distresses. At the end of that
psalm we read, Whoso is wise and will observe these things,
even they shall understand the loving kindness of the Lord.
And the loving kindness of the Lord is a loving kindness to
be understood. And mercy of the Lord is a mercy
to be understood. With a child, if they're given
a sweet, if they're given a toy or something pleasant, then they
don't need much understanding. that love is giving it and it's
something pleasurable but if they're giving a smack and chastening
because of something that they've done it takes a lot for them
to understand there is much love or more love in that correction
than what there was in what was given to them and so with the
Lord that is a mercy and loving kindness that is to be understood
maybe you're walking through things this evening There are
hard things, difficult things, tribulation, sickness, affliction,
trying things, things that are hard to be understood. that may you be able to see through
what is the Lord's appointment, to see mercy mixed with it all,
and the goodness of the Lord running through all, and especially
if the Lord brings you to have fellowship with Him in His sufferings,
and something that you pass through leads you to think and to meditate
upon His path. Remember, dear uncle, now in
glory, but He had a son, again, also in glory now. But he was
afflicted all his days with a mind that would go wrong. He was,
in some ways, a schizophrenic. And at the end of his father's
life, I visited him on hospital. And he was looking out the window.
And he thought he saw a football field and things. There was nothing
there at all. And when he realized that he
was actually seeing things, and that two things were going on
in his mind, and he just said, oh, poor Brian, poor Brian. And
I knew what he meant. Probably for the first time in
his life, he realized personally what his son had gone through.
And you know, we might have those times. For the first time. whether it be physical pain,
whether it be friends desert us as they did the Lord, whether
it be the Lord hiding his face from us as our Lord had, my God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me? those things the Lord brings
us in to bring us to see what we didn't see before and our
fellowship with Him in His sufferings and His mercy inscribed upon
it all so that we walk together in agreement and in love marvelling at what the Lord has
done for our poor souls. Our God, who is merciful and
gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. May the Lord be pleased
to add his blessing and bless his word. Amen.