I've entitled this message, Compassionate
Repetition. That seems like a strange title,
but there's a good reason for choosing that. The first is that
in this account, we see here again the compassion of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And then the second thing we
see here is this is a miracle that Jesus had already done.
So look at the first verse in verse 29. It says, This scene
is familiar. Christ leaves one place, He crosses
the sea, He arrives at His destination, He goes up into a mountain, He
prays, He sits down, and people come to Him. We see this repeatedly
in the Gospel. So that's the first thing we
see about this repetition is that what happens in one place
happens in another. Every action that Jesus did is
a necessary step for him to fulfill his will. He preaches in one
place, then another, some here and believe, many here and do
not believe. God determined every place he
would go before he went. Acts 15, 18 says, known unto
God are all his works from the foundation of the world. God
chose whom he would save before the world began. Remember Acts
13.48? It says, "...and as many as were
ordained to eternal life believed." God chose whom He would save
before the world began. And He leaves some to their unbelief. He rescues others from theirs. He is the Sovereign Savior. He's
able to save the worst of sinners to the uttermost. This is His
way. Remember 1 Corinthians 1, He
says, You see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after
the flesh. not many mighty, not many noble. God has chosen the foolish things
of this world to confound the wise, and God has chosen the
weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty and
base things of the world. And things which are despised
has God chosen, yea, things which are not, to bring to nothing
things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence."
This is the way God works. It humbles us to know that God
is sovereign. We see Him save someone and we
wonder, will He save me? I love that song. Pass me not,
O gentle Savior. Hear my humble cry. While on
others Thou art calling, do not pass me by. He chooses losers
and passes by winners. He saves known sinners and leaves
religious pretenders. He brings the gospel in power
through the weak and the unlearned. And His chosen people are the
least likely among men. What do you say to this? I say
what Jeremiah said, Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed. Save me, and I shall be saved. For Thou art my praise. The only
thing we can hope for is that God would save us and heal us,
and in so doing, we will give glory to God. We will praise
His grace. My iniquity is great. I deserve
nothing but judgment, and I cannot save myself. I cannot make the
Lord save me. Therefore, I say, Lord, You are
my only hope. And in the next verse, in verse
30 of Matthew 15, it says that great multitudes came to Him,
having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and
many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet. Trouble drives
us to Christ. There's no question about that.
God uses afflictions to bring us to Himself. Psalm 119, 67
says, Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now have I
kept thy word." God's word to us is, Believe Christ. Remember
1 John 3 23, this is his commandment that you should believe on his
son and to love one another. Affliction of our body and mind
is the catalyst God uses to get our attention, to uncover our
deeper need. And that need is Christ. He is
the great physician of our souls. Thank God for the stress that
my sin produces and that God uses to drive me to Christ. I
love the short prayers in Scripture. Matthew 15, 25. She said, Lord,
help me. And Peter said, Lord, save me.
And the thief, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
And the publican, God have mercy upon me. And in Psalm 2511, I
say it repeatedly, maybe we'll all remember it before it's over. For thy name's sake, O Lord,
pardon mine iniquity, for it is great. Take away all iniquity,
Hosea says, and receive us graciously. Psalm 119, 133 says, order my
steps in thy word, and let not any iniquity have dominion over
me. Let thy mercies come also unto
me, O Lord, even thy salvation according to thy word." What
are these? These are the prayers of those who've been afflicted
by God. Their sin has risen up and has driven them to Christ.
And so I take great comfort in this scripture here where these
people brought, these different sick people, the lame, the blind,
the dumb, the maimed, and many others. I like this phrase, and
many others. There's nothing left out there
in that little phrase, is there? Many others. I've got to be one
of those many others. I might not be physically lame
or maimed in my body, but I'm in that many others class. Many
others. And notice it says here, great
multitudes followed Jesus. They came to Him. Christ is able
to save all who come to Him. Though He has saved multitudes,
His power is undiminished. Think about that. He saved multitudes. Every time you see these multitudes
coming to Him, you wonder, where does all the power to save them
come from? Does He get tired? He saved multitudes,
and yet He saves multitudes more. He can still save me, the worst
of sinners. Paul said, oh, wretched man that
I am, that I am. Here's Paul the Apostle, and
he says, that I am this wretched man who shall deliver me from
the body of this death. Isn't that in this class of many
others? I thank God, Paul said, through
Jesus Christ my Lord. So the multitudes came to Him.
God ordains who He will save. And He ordains both the end to
which He will save, and the means by which He will save. Who, how,
and the means. He chose who He would save, and
He chose how He would save them. He purposed who, He purposed
what, and He purposed how. He says in John 6, 37, All that
the Father giveth Me, That's the who, those the Father
gave to Christ. And Jesus said, I came down from
heaven to do the will of him that sent me. That's the how.
And then Jesus said, all the Father giveth me shall come to
me. That's the means, coming to Christ.
He's chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world.
God chose his people in Christ. This is the who. And Jesus said,
I laid down my life for the sheep. And Christ loved the Church and
gave Himself for it. Christ redeemed those the Father
gave to Him, and that is how we're saved. But there's also
the means. By the washing of regeneration
and renewing of the Holy Ghost, Titus 3.5 says, the Spirit of
God calls all Christ-redeemed and gives life to them with a
heart-faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. All given to Christ come
to Christ. That's the means. We come to
Him. This is the ordained means by
which we receive salvation. Unless we rest the weight of
our sin and our eternal souls on Christ's salvation alone,
we cannot be saved. I think that this is the real
issue, isn't it? When we really get it down and
draw the string tight, What does it come to? It comes to this,
I'm a great sinner and the Lord has to save me and he has saved
his people by his work. And so we rest our case with
Him. We come to Him and we believe
that He alone can save and that He alone by His work has saved
His people. And we rest our case with Him.
God the Father determined who He saved. He chose us in Christ
before the foundation of the world. And He determined the
end. that we should be holy and without blame. This is the determined
end, that we should be justified. Christ fulfilled the purpose
determined by the Father for all the Father gave to Him, and
that is the will that God gave Him to do, and He fulfilled it.
So God chooses His people, He gives them to Christ, and He
chose them in Christ to be holy and without blame. He justified
them by the blood of His Son, and He did all this because of
His love. And His love is consistent with
His holiness. He says He's chosen us in Him
that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. God's
love is a love that works. He makes us holy. He justifies
us. And He does it so that when He
extends and gives to us this abundance of His love, it's according
to His justice. Remember Daniel chapter 9, around
verse 16 or so. He says, "...according to all
thy righteousness, O Lord, save us, forgive us, take away our
sin, Deliver us. All these things. Do it according
to your righteousness. Do it for your namesake. Pardon
my iniquity for your namesake. And then we see here that the
people cast the lame and the blind and the dumb and the maimed
and many others at Jesus' feet. What do we learn from this? We
learn that Christ heals all manner of diseases. All kinds of sickness. He forgives all manner of sin. He heals all who were brought
to Him. He saves all who come to Him. But here we also see the means.
They were brought to Him by people. In those days they probably carried
them in their arms or on beds. Maybe they put them in a cart
and rolled them there or put them on a donkey. Whatever it
was, it was a lot of work. It was difficult. A lot of labor. Only compassion would move them
to do that, wouldn't it? No doubt they were poor and the
outcast by their infirmities, but their loved ones brought
them to Christ. And I want to especially draw
attention to this word maimed here. Not only did Jesus restore
withered limbs, but he restored maimed, mutilated limbs too. Sin has taken a horrible toll
on our heart. It's left us mutilated without
any resemblance of spiritual normality. I've never had a mutilated
limb before and I'm thankful for that. But I feel for those
who have. And you've never met a doctor
yet who's been able to restore a mutilated limb, have you? They
do have prosthetics and thank God for that. But still, here
they bring people who had been mutilated. Maybe their eye had
been taken out. Maybe their ears had been damaged
and they couldn't hear because they had an accident. Or their
hand, or their arm, or their legs. Who knows how many ways
people in those days were mutilated. But the Lord healed the mutilated
so that these things about them that were mutilated were actually
restored. That's amazing to think about
that. Jesus, could you imagine what the people, it says here,
when the people saw it, glorified the God of Israel. Wow, how did
He do that? How did He restore sight to these
blind, and to the deaf, and the dumb, and the lame, and these
mutilated, and all the others? And so we learn from this how
the Lord heals and saves sin mutilated souls. Thank God for
that. He gives understanding to the
ignorant. We've lost our minds. He gives
faith to the unbelieving. He produces love for Christ in
the heart where there were only haters of God. Never forget the
pit out of which you were digged. Isaiah 51.1 says that. Don't
forget the pit out of which you were digged. But in Titus chapter
3, if you want to look at that with me. Titus chapter 3, we're
like this in our souls. The picture here is of physical
things. But remember in scripture all physical healing is just
a reflection of what goes on in our souls. And you know there's
a good reason for that as I think about this. We can't see the
sickness in our souls, but we can feel it when it's in our
body, can't we? We don't know so much about what
sin does to our heart, but when we feel sick, when we feel the
weakness of our sickness, and the hopelessness and helplessness,
we can't do anything to recover ourselves, we begin then to ask
for help, don't we? And when no man can help us,
we pray to God and we get earnest about it when we're sick. But
the Lord does that in order to teach us how earnestly, how much
more earnestly we need to be serious about our souls. But
in Titus chapter 3, he says in verse 3, Disobedient, deceived, serving
divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and
hating one another." That describes us, doesn't it? Full of envy,
hatred, malice towards others. Being controlled by divers lusts
and pleasures. That's foolish, disobedient and
thinking that we're wise. Pretending that we're wise. Pompous
and proud and arrogant and yet a servant and slave of sin and
ignorant. Dead in sins, that's what we
are. Hateful and hating one another. What can be done for this? Verse
4, But after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward
man appeared, not by works of righteousness, which we have
done, but according to His mercy, He saved us by the washing of
regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed
on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being
justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the
hope of eternal life, justified." That word is so big. It means
that God has removed our sin from us so that He sees in us
no sin. He has so justified us that the
very righteousness of God is the righteousness He sees in
His people. God Himself can find no fault in His own righteousness,
because it's the obedience unto death of the Lord Jesus Christ,
out of which He served God with His whole heart, soul, mind,
and strength in saving us from our sins. And so we were mutilated,
and God saved us this way. And they cast these people at
Jesus' feet. What does that teach us to do?
It teaches us to come to Christ, doesn't it? Not only that we
come to Christ, but we can bring our friends and our families
to Christ and cast them at His feet. That seems like a funny
way of saying it. They cast them at His feet. It
doesn't mean that we physically hurl them. But we tell them that
Christ is all. We tell them Christ is everything,
and then we entrust them entirely to Him. We can't recover ourselves. Are you missing a spiritual tongue?
Christ hears the need of your heart. Call upon Him in your
heart. Bear your soul to Him. Sinners
cannot make restitution to God, who is holy, for one offense.
They cannot take one step toward a perfect righteousness that
God can accept. Eternal life is a gift. Faith
is the gift of God's grace. Christ is sovereign over all,
and we must own our sin and helplessness. We must cast ourselves upon His
mercy. And we must do the same for our
family and friends and this lost world. They're sinners. They're
helpless. There's none but Christ who can
help them. He holds our breath in His hands. We must come and seek all from
Him of whom are all things and by whom are all things and to
whom are all things. And then in verse 31 we see,
It says, "...in so much that the multitude wondered when they
saw the dumb to speak, and the maimed to behold, and the lame
to walk, and the blind to see, and they glorified the God of
Israel." The Lord Jesus Christ is the brightness of God's glory.
Because in Him, God has saved His people from their sins to
the glory of God's holiness, His love, His wisdom, His power,
and His grace. When the Lord Jesus Christ gives
us and those we love this precious faith, what do we do? We say,
Lord, I didn't know that it could be this way. I did not know that
this was what salvation consisted of. That it's all on You. That it doesn't depend on me. That You bring me to see what
You have done. What I am and my helplessness. And cause me to cast my case
at Your feet. And find, in doing so, that You
have delivered me from every sin. And brought me to God. The
Lord does all things well, doesn't He? Mark 7.37, it says that Jesus
has done all things well. That's what the people said when
they saw Him. He has done all things well. And Psalm 34.2,
it says, My soul shall make her boast in the Lord, the humble
shall hear thereof and be glad. Haven't you wanted to tell somebody
You know what the Lord has done for me? I was looking in salvation
in all the wrong places and I found it in Christ. And you want people
to be as excited about Him as you are. The humble shall hear
and they shall be glad. God the Father chose and appointed
and anointed Christ to glorify Himself in the salvation of His
people. Jesus did glorify His Father
by giving eternal life to all the Father gave Him. Look at
John 17. It does us well to look at this
over and over. These are amazing. This is an
amazing... Who can describe the intimacy
between God the Son and God the Father, and the fact that God
the Holy Spirit would record these words for His people here.
Our Mediator is speaking to His Father, and He says in verse
1, "...these words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven,
and He said, Father, The hour has come. Glorify thy son, that
thy son also may glorify thee." The son couldn't glorify his
father unless he glorified his son. How did he do that? He gave
him a people to save. He gave Him a will to fulfill,
to lay His life down for His people, by taking their sins
to Himself, bearing their infirmities in His own soul and His own body,
and satisfying God, and sanctifying them by His one offering, and
perfecting them forever. And in so doing, the Father has
glorified His Son. And Jesus says in verse 2, "...as
Thou hast given Him power, over all flesh, that he should give
eternal life to as many as thou hast given him." That's the way
the Son glorifies the Father, by giving eternal life to as
many as God has given Him. And how could He do that unless
the Father glorified Him in His salvation? So that sinners see,
and sinners glorify the God of Israel. That's what these men
did here. These people, they brought their
sick, the Lord healed them, and they glorified the God of Israel. And then look back at Matthew
15 and verse 32. He says... Then Jesus called his disciples
to him and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they
continue with me now three days and they have nothing to eat.
I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way. And
his disciples said to him, when should we have so much bread
in the wilderness to fill so great a multitude? And Jesus
said to them, how many loaves have ye? And they said, seven,
and a few little fishes. And he commanded the multitude
to sit down on the ground, and he took the seven loaves and
the fishes, and he gave thanks and break them, and gave to his
disciples, and the disciples to the multitude, and they did
all eat and were filled. And they took up the broken meat
that was left seven baskets full, and they that did eat were four
thousand men beside the women and children." Here we have another
account of Jesus feeding thousands with a scant amount of food,
the first thing we see here is that Jesus Christ is full of
compassion. How can we describe this? What
is compassion? You ever wonder about that? What
is compassion? Compassion is seeing someone
suffering for various reasons, maybe sickness in this case,
maybe poverty, and especially sin sickness. And having a sympathy
towards that sorrowing person, that one in anguish and pain,
a sympathy that leads us to feel what that person is feeling.
And when the Lord Jesus Christ has compassion, it says in Matthew
8, 17 that He Himself took our infirmities. So His compassion
is more than just a feeling. It includes His actual taking
of the thing that is causing our grief in Himself, feeling
the anguish and the pain of it. How could the Lord Jesus Christ
heal any? How could He feed any? How could
He do these things? How could God show favor to sinners? Only one way, by giving His Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ, as our mediator. He's full of compassion. He had compassion on the multitude,
and His compassion moved Him. You know, it says that out of
the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Whatever's in your
heart, that's the issue. Remember the heart issues? The
matters of the heart? Jesus said that the heart of
man is desperately wicked. Who can know it? And out of the
heart proceeds all these things. Evil thoughts, and adulteries,
and murders, and thefts, and covetousness. And he describes
this. But here, we see the Lord Jesus Christ acting out of a
heart full of compassion. What Jesus did and said wasn't
superficial. It came from his heart. And so
he has a heart full of compassion, and he was moved. And all that was in his heart,
he did it. Psalm 135 verse 6 says, But I
like this, and I'm going to have you turn there. Because it's
something that we need to have wore out in our Bibles. Micah
chapter 7. The title of this sermon, remember,
is Compassionate Repetition. So if I take you to verses you've
seen before, just chalk it up as Compassionate Repetition. Micah 7, verse 18 says, Who is
a God like unto thee? that pardoneth iniquity, and
passes by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage,
he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delights in
mercy." We often think God is reluctant to show mercy, don't
we? Oh, we prayed, Lord have mercy on us. And we should. But
we think in our prayer that we doubt that God is really interested
in showing mercy. But here He says He delights
in mercy. It's in His heart. It's in His
nature. The throne is established not
just on judgment, but on mercy. And verse 19, He will turn again. He will have compassion upon
us. He will subdue our iniquities. This is His compassion. He sees
our sin. What we invited through the front
door and commit and think and are in our heart, He sees it.
That's the problem. They're maimed. They're lame.
They're blind. They're withered. They're dead
in sins and He has compassion on them. And He says He's going
to subdue our iniquities. He sees our sins as His enemy
and our enemy. And thou will cast all their
sins into the depths of the sea. Don't you hear Pharaoh and his
army being cast into the sea and God covering them here? That's
simply teaching us what God did for us with our sins. He cast
them into the sea. The sea of His judgment. The
sea of His forgetfulness. A sea that buries our sins, so
they're gone out of His sight. And this is what Christ's compassion
did here. And then back in Matthew, He
says He called His disciples. He called His disciples. It was
His purpose. The Lord Jesus Christ, He took
it upon Himself. It was His initiative. And it
was His work alone. that fed these people, that healed
them. Christ purposes, He provides and He performs all things. Look at Psalm 57, verse 1. Be
merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me, for my soul trusteth
in thee. Yea, in the shadow of thy wings
will I make my refuge until these calamities be overpassed. I will
cry unto God, most high, unto God that performeth all things
for me." What a mercy. He does the work. It's His purpose,
His initiative, and His work. And He tells His disciples, He
calls them. The Lord will do all things for
me. And then it says He healed them. And healing is just another
way of our sins being taken away from us. The plague of our heart
being corrected. We're given a new heart. He saves
sinners from all their sins and He gives them life. And He maintains
the life He gives. He purchased His people with
His own blood and then He feeds them through faith in His blood.
He preserves them in faith unto eternal life by His rule and
His compassionate intercession. Then the disciples wondered in
the same verses we're looking at here. He says, they wondered
and they said, how can so little that we have feed this great
multitude? When should we have so much bread
in the wilderness to fill so great a multitude? Verse 33.
When we consider ourselves and the great task of spreading the
gospel to which we have been called, we must always look away
from our lack to Christ's supply. Philippians 4.19 says, My God
shall supply all your need according to His riches and glory by Christ
Jesus. The work is great, the workers
are weak, but the Lord of the harvest is almighty. He will
reap everything He has planted. He will gather all into His barn. He fed a nation in the desert
for 40 years with bread from heaven and gave them drink out
of a rock. That bread and that rock is Christ.
What I have is nothing, but what I have is of no consideration
when Christ provides." Now, when Jesus fed 5,000, He here again
asks His disciples what they have. That's interesting, isn't
it? The amount is enough only for perhaps two or three. Maybe
a small family. Think about that. Seven loaves
and a few small fishes. Maybe sardine-sized fishes. And
if it's enough for perhaps one small family, and there were
4,000 men there, then you think, well it's enough to feed one
of the 4,000, right? What if you could take a meal,
when you're really hungry, they had been with him for three days,
and you could take one of your meals, and you're hungry now,
it's been a couple of hours since you ate last, and you could divide
it in 4,000 equal pieces. 4,000 pieces! And you look at one of those
pieces and say, How is that going to satisfy me? It's an insult
to your hunger, isn't it? But to take this, and to break
it, and to do it again, This is what the Lord did here. Once
again, He asked His disciples to give Him what they have. And
He takes what they give Him. And He gives thanks for it. And
He breaks it. And then He gives it back to
the disciples. And there we see Christ thanking
His Father for what He has been given by His Father to give for
the people. What is it that Christ has been
given by His Father? He says, "...a body hast thou
prepared me. I come to do thy will, O God. Thy law is within my heart."
God the Father gave him a body and a human soul. And with that
human soul and body, the Lord Jesus Christ breaks and He pours
out His blood and He gives it to His people. And when He does,
He finds in Himself great delight and satisfaction, because the
Gospel is that the Lord Jesus Christ has by Himself saved His
people, and He takes what God has given Him, and He thanks
Him for it, and then He gives it to His disciples, and He tells
them, now you give it. You give it to them. When the Lord gives the Gospel
to us, Through the preaching of the gospel, and it comes to
us in power, we eat and drink of Christ by faith. Christ crucified
satisfies the longing soul, and it glorifies our great God and
Savior. The disciples gave to Jesus what
little they had, and He thanked God for it, and blessed it, and
break it, and then He gave it back to them to give to the people.
This is the way God saves. Not many wise after the flesh,
not many mighty, not many noble, but He chooses and saves and
uses the unlearned and the weak and the poor. The Lord will always
work so that He alone gets the glory, but in so doing, He will
save His people without fail through the ministry of the gospel.
The multitude, this entire crowd, ate and were filled Believing
Christ satisfies our hungry souls. When God feeds us on Christ and
gives him so that by faith we see him alone as all of our standing
and life and hope, then our souls are satisfied. Now, I want you
to think with me a little bit here about this repetition. This
miracle is nearly repeated just like it was in chapter 14, where
the Lord fed 5,000, which we just went over just a couple
of weeks ago. So when I was reading this account, as I said before,
I was tempted to say, well, we'll just skip over this scripture
because we've already looked at it. But as I poured out my
foolishness and my helplessness to the Lord, I began to think.
Why does Jesus repeat this miracle? Why does He repeat several of
His miracles? And the first thing I thought
was this. Because He saved multitudes, He can save multitudes more. He saved others, He can save
me. If you were in the crowd, if
you were hungry as these people were, you would have thought
this miracle... Would you have thought that this
miracle was unnecessary? Maybe you were even in that crowd
where Jesus fed the 5,000 and you ate then. And now you're
here and there's 4,000 men with their women and children. Would
you think, after being with Jesus three days, that you didn't need
the food that He was about to create? What He did in one place, He
does in many places. What He does for one, He does
for many. And what He does once, He does
over and over. He often repeats His miracles.
And it's a good thing that He does. What if God determined
to make known His grace and power by only saving one person out
of the entire human race? That would be grace, wouldn't
it? To save one? To save one would require Him
to come to earth and live a perfect life and bear the load of that
one sinner's sin and die with that sin under the wrath of God.
But aren't you glad that the Lord Jesus Christ repeats His
miracle of salvation? He saved in Galilee. He can save
here in Marysville. He saved thousands before. Yet
He can still save me. He has saved multitudes and He
can save multitudes more. He made the gospel real in my
heart before. I need Him to make it real to
me again. Tell me the old, old story. We
need to hear the gospel again. The song says this, tell me the
story slowly, that I may take it in. That wonderful redemption,
God's remedy for sin. Tell me the story often, for
I forget so soon. The early dew of morning has
passed away at noon. Paul said, In Philippians 3.1,
to write the same things to you, to me, indeed, is not grievous,
but for you it is safe. Heaven will be worshiping Christ
for eternity for the wonders of His person, which are made
known to us in our redemption. Aren't you glad the Lord repeats
things? And our Lord repeats His miracles because we are continuously
needy. These were hungry like those
who came before. We never outgrow our need for
mercy and grace. We never grow beyond our need
for mercy. We only grow in grace and faith
in Christ as everything in our salvation, everything in our
standing, everything in our coming to God. We will always, even
in eternity, be utterly dependent on His grace. Heaven will be
a welfare state. Throughout eternity, we will
be unable to earn one blessing from God. From our inmost beings,
we will forever confess, I am what I am by the grace of God.
As the hymn writer said, oh to grace, how great a debtor, daily
I'm constrained to be. How many times a day do you need
fresh mercy from Christ? When you fall into familiar sins
of imagination and motive and thought and word and deed, when
you commit the same sin for the hundredth time and the thousandth
time, do you not with each time find a continuous, even a growing
need for mercy and cleansing from Christ? Remember Psalm 80? Turn us again, O God of our salvation. Cause thy face to shine, and
we shall be saved. Turn us again, again, and again. That's the repetition we're talking
about. It's the compassion of Christ that caused him to repeat
his mercy. And that is our repeated cry. And there we find ourselves again,
as those bitten in the wilderness, looking to Christ. Once again,
we realize, fresh. that we have nothing to bring.
No tears can satisfy God. No tears and sorrow can persuade
Him to forgive me. My sorrow is a sorrow to be repented
of. Only the blood of Christ cleanses
us from all sin. So we again and again and again
never stop going. We don't leave because there's
nowhere else for a sinner to go. Be merciful to me, O Lord,
for I cry unto Thee daily." Look at Psalm 86. Psalm 86. I was looking at lots of verses
and trying to pick the ones that I wanted to bring here. But this
one I want you to see. Psalm 86. I want you to look
at verse 1. He says, "...Bow down thine ear,
O Lord, hear me, for I am poor and needy. Preserve my soul,
for I am holy." O thou, my God, save thy servant that trusteth
in thee. Look at verse 3. Be merciful
unto me, O Lord, for I cry unto thee daily. Now, when I read
that, I think, why would someone who is holy, who daily cries
to the Lord, need mercy? That person, whoever it might
be, clearly is someone who doesn't seem to be needing mercy, but
they're crying here because they're in such need, and they cry daily. And what is the cry of this one
who daily cries and is holy? Mercy, free me from my sin. Let me see your face. I need
mercy. Whenever the Lord repeats anything,
it's to remind us Do you remember what he said about the Holy Spirit
in John 14, 26? He says this, "...but the Comforter,
which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name,
He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your
remembrance whatsoever I've said to you." When the Lord repeats
anything, it's to bring it to our remembrance. to bring it
to our remembrance. Looking back in our lives, don't
you see that you've learned many lessons over and over again? Don't you find yourself learning
the same thing over and over again? You thought you had it,
but you don't. You have to continually come
back to God for grace in Christ. Don't we learn each day that
Christ is our all? We have an ill-favored thought
that we have somehow accomplished something, or we've overcome
something, or that we have something that God would have required
of us. But we learn again that we have
nothing, and we are nothing apart from Christ. God is pleased with
Him alone, and He's only pleased with me for what He finds in
Him. Remember Matthew 17 verse 5,
Jesus was transfigured before Peter, James, and John. And then
he's on the mount of transfiguration, his face is shining like the
sun, his clothes are white. wider than anything on earth
could make them. And then Moses and Elijah appear
with him there on the mountain, and they're talking with him
about his death that he should accomplish at Jerusalem. The
work God gave him to do to save his people. How he would die
and how he's going to accomplish it. And they're talking about
this and Peter blurts out this stupid thing. He says, let's
make a tabernacle here for each one. Moses and Elijah and Jesus. He put them on equal ground in
what he said. And immediately, God the Father
himself spoke out of a cloud from heaven. He said, this is
my beloved son. and whom I'm well pleased, hear
ye Him." Remember those words? When we look back over our lives,
we think of all the foolishness, and what does the Lord tell us?
Hear Him. It's not about what you find
in yourself. It's not about your own improvement. Your improvement
comes when you see Christ as all. Your salvation, your ability
to glorify God, Glorify God only comes when God glorifies Himself
in saving your soul. Isn't that what Jesus Himself
even prayed? Father, glorify Thy Son that
Thy Son also may glorify Thee. Psalm 136 repeats one phrase
26 times in every verse. Look at Psalm 136 with me. Psalm 136. This is not the only
chapter of the Bible that does this, but I want you to see this. Psalm 136. You can read the whole
chapter, but I just want you to look at the last four verses.
Verse 23. Speaking of the Lord, He says,
"...who remembered us in our low estate." Weren't these dumb,
and lame, and blind, and maimed, and the others? Weren't they
in a low estate? Are humbled? By their sickness, we're humbled
by our sin. The Lord remembered us in our
lowest state. For His mercy endureth forever. And He has redeemed us from our
enemies. For His mercy endureth forever. Who gives food to all flesh. For His mercy endureth forever. Oh, give thanks unto the God
of heaven. For His mercy endureth forever. Isn't that what we see in Matthew
15? Jesus looks with compassion on
the sick and the hungry. He redeems His people from sin,
from the curse of God's law, and the power of Satan to deceive
and condemn. And He gives food to His people. The people glorify God for His
mercy. for His mercy endureth forever. His compassion causes Him to
repeat this miracle, because His mercy endureth forever. Over
and over again Christ gives grace, repeatedly and unendingly, because
He's full of compassion and is moved with compassion towards
sinners. It is of the Lord's mercies.
Lamentations chapter 3, verse 22. 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. And you can keep reading it,
verse 24, the Lord is my portion, saith my soul, therefore will
I hope in Him. Remember the Lord Jesus Christ
on the cross, crying out to God in anguish of soul and body,
under the wrath of God and the torments of His soul and the
afflictions added by men. And yet He remembers this, because
His mercies never fail, therefore He called upon Him and the Lord
delivered Him. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your mercy.
It endures forever. Thank you for the Lord Jesus
Christ, who as our mediator, is full of compassion. He sees
the sick, He takes the initiative, He purposes, He works, He saves,
and He feeds. He does all, and we glorify the
God of Israel. Thank you for this mercy, Lord.
Help us to find Him to be our all, to hear Him only, to find
our rest in Him. In His name we pray, amen.