Turn in your Bibles to the book
of Exodus, Exodus chapter 34. As we begin to look at this text,
there are a couple of things that I would want you to be reminded
of. And the first is that these Israelites
have just been guilty of violating the newly given law of God."
So that ought to tell us something. First of all, it ought to remind
us and we ought to see that the law was not given by God as a
means of obedience whereby to be accepted by and blessed by
God. You see, as He was giving it,
they were breaking it. And that is always the case. And not only that, Moses had
just broken the stones, the tablets, the first ones, over the idol
that they had made. And then the second thing that
I would want you to remember as we look at this is that Moses
had just asked God, to show him his glory. He asked to know the Lord's glory. Look back in Exodus 33 at that
18th verse. And he said, I beseech thee,
show me thy glory. And then in this 34th chapter,
God gives instructions. Verse 1 says, And the Lord said
unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first,
and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first
tables which thou breakest. And be ready, in the morning,
and come up in the morning unto Mount Sinai, and present thyself
there to me in the top of the mount. And no man shall come
up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the
mount, neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount,
And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first. And Moses
rose up early in the morning, and went up unto Mount Sinai,
as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two
tables of stone." And then if you look at verse 5, it says,
"...and the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him
there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord descended,
which is also the Lord condescended, And He did so in that cloud,
which is simply that Shekinah glory cloud, and in some visible
form and presence. Most likely, this is the pre-incarnate
Lord Jesus Christ. Because it says that He stood
with Moses. and proclaimed the name of the
Lord. That simply means the name by
which he would have himself known. He is the Lord. And that name means something
like this. It's almost a name which cannot
be fully translated. It means, I am that I am. I am the Eternal One. And I am the all-sufficient and
self-existent as well as self-sufficient God. I am the Lord. And now on this
occasion, he makes himself known in the glory of his mercy. That's what I call this today,
the glory of God's mercy. He makes Himself known in the
glory of His mercy and His grace and His goodness to such lawbreakers,
to such sinners. And these words, they now preface
his giving of this second table of the law, and in that he makes
known that he pardons merely out of his own good pleasure,
not for their merit's sakes, but just because of his own inclination
to show them mercy. And His mercy, as we find here,
is not simply for some in Israel alone, but it extends to a numberless
multitude. You see, that is something that
is to be proclaimed not only in Moses' day, but in every day
and age as the world stands. That is, that God is a God of
mercy. He identifies with mercy, and
He is, as He says, merciful. Not only merciful, but keeping
mercy for thousands. Look in verse 6. And the Lord
passed by before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful
and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and
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 to the fourth generation. And Moses
made haste and bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped."
And he said, "...if now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord,
let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us, for it is a stiff-necked
people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for
thine inheritance." When we read that 136th Psalm this morning,
you read back to me something that is stated in Scripture 41
times at least. His mercy endures forever. That means His mercy has neither
beginning or end. And it is said that He is the
Lord who is plenteous in mercy. Even in this way, that He is
of tender mercy. and even by the prophet Jeremiah,
that it's because of the Lord's mercies that we're not consumed. Let me read you a couple of verses
from the Psalms. He says, "...the Lord is merciful
and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous, in mercy. Again, for as the heaven is high
above the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear
Him. Again, the Lord is gracious and
full of compassion, slow to anger, and of great Mercy. That's what I'm interested in.
Great mercy. And by the prophet Daniel, it
is said, to the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness,
though we have rebelled against Him. If we have any mercy, if
we need any mercy, It's going to have to come from the Lord. It's going to have to come from
Jehovah God. And there are four questions
concerning this mercy that I want us to see if by the grace of
God we can answer and find out from the Scriptures. Because
in the very outset, I would assure you of this, mercy from God is
totally different from mercy from men. You see, if we receive
mercy from men, we are simply likes, like sinners receiving
mercy from another sinner. God is not like us. And so His mercy has to be quite
different. It is mercy received from one
who is far above us. His is great mercy. So the very first question that
I'd have us to think about this morning is this, what is mercy? You know, we use a lot of words,
and especially a lot of biblical words. We use a lot of words,
but we really don't understand what they mean. And if not that,
we use a biblical word in which a worldly word or definition
has been used to define that. What is mercy in the Bible? Well, mercy, the word itself,
literally means something like this, to have compassion on. And another definition of it,
and one that most of us do not like by nature, it means to pity. And we do not like to imagine
ourselves in such a state and condition that even men and women
should pity us, much less God. But that's what mercy means.
It means to have compassion on, and to pity, and to actively
engage in it, or to treat one who has shown themselves as an
enemy with kindness. As a matter of fact, in Deuteronomy,
I think we can find something about what it means in what it
says in Deuteronomy 7, when it says, "...and when the Lord thy
God..." shall deliver them," that is, these Canaanites that
they were about to go in and take their land and get victory
over in battle. He says, "...when thy God shall
deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them and utterly
destroy them. Thou shalt make no covenant with
them, nor show mercy to them." You see, if they had shown mercy
to them, they would be doing just the opposite. He said, you'll
smite them, you'll utterly destroy them, you'll make no covenant
or agreement with them of any kind, you'll show no mercy to
them. Does that tell you something
about what mercy is? You see, mercy, as can be as
plainly stated as I understand it, mercy is for the miserable. Mercy is God not giving us what
we deserve for our sins. Plainly said, mercy takes away
misery. Mercy is for such as these lawbreakers. They had already shown And they
were showing at that very instant, and they would continue to show
that they deserve nothing but the wrath of God. And so if He
treated them in any way which they would be delivered or blessed,
it would have to be His mercy. Mercy. Mercy is for the undeserving. Mercy is for the unworthy, for
the very hell-deserving. Mercy has to be for such as who
make themselves rebels. And it cannot in any way be bought. It cannot in any way be worked
for. It cannot in any way be attained
by something because of something in us. It has to be freely. Because the very fact that you
need mercy shows that you don't deserve it. You can never do
anything to get it. As a matter of fact, you deserve
just the opposite. Turn over to 1 Timothy, chapter
1. And this can be seen, I think,
maybe in a little clearer light, if you listen to what the Apostle
Paul says. This man who, if you read what
he says in Philippians 3, describes himself as one who was a Jew,
and who was a Pharisee, and who was morally upright, and who
was lifted up and held in high esteem by his peers, a teacher
of men, all these things under the law in his own eyes and the
eyes of men, blameless. But he says in verse 13 of 1
Timothy 1, who was before a blasphemer in all his religion, in all that
he said of God, did for God, he said, I was before a blasphemer
and a persecutor and injurious, but I obtained Mercy. I did all those things in the
ignorance of my unbelief. I was in myself at that time
and would be, if left to myself, an ignorant unbeliever. But God showed mercy on me. I
acted like His enemy, but He showed mercy on me. I acted a
fool and a rebel. I acted in stupidity and blindness
and the ignorance, the total ignorance of unbelief. But He
took pity on me. That's what mercy is. God taking
pity. God having compassion on those
who do not deserve it. who could not ever merit it or
earn it in any way, and who just the opposite deserve His wrath. All right? Here's the second
thing. What is the glory of God's mercy? If this is what mercy
is, what is the glory of God's mercy? Well, I think it's obvious
in what he's saying here, and not only saying it, but re-saying
it, the glory lies in this in part because it is sovereign
mercy, because it comes from God as He wills to show it. Look back up in that 33rd chapter
in verse 19, after Moses asked him to show him his glory. Here it is. And he said, "...I
will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim
the name of the Lord before thee, and will be gracious to whom
I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show
mercy." Now, if God shows mercy to somebody, who does not in
any way deserve it, which mercy cannot be deserved, if he takes
pity on any out of Adam's race, he says, here it is, I do it
just because I would. That's it. I will have mercy
on whom I will have mercy. And until we're enabled of God
to see ourselves and to see what it is that He has done for us
in Christ, how could we ever really glorify Him until we're
enabled to see that it's just of His mercy? Hold your place
and turn over to Romans 9. Romans 9. where in Romans 9,
rather than trying to say that he is just applying this principle
only to these Israelites, he's showing us that this principle
of mercy and grace, he shows to those he saves. Look down
in Romans 9 and verse 15. Guess who he uses for the illustration? For he saith to Moses, I will
have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion
on whom I will have compassion. And he uses that to show that
this is the principle of God in His saving mercy. He says,
So then, it is not of him that willeth, Salvation is not of
a man's will, his so-called free will. It's not because he willed
to do something or he decided to do something. So then, it
is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth. Not of his
works, not in any way, not at any time, not in any part of
his own doings. He says, but of God. That shows mercy. We haven't
got anything to toot our horns about. He says, for the Scripture
saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised
thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that my name
might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath
he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth."
That's God. And He said, here's the picture.
Here are all these people down there in the land of Egypt. He
has mercy on those Israelites and delivers them. He leaves
those Egyptians to their own self. Even describes Pharaoh,
he has mercy on Moses and he hardens Pharaoh and even says
that he hardens Pharaoh. Now, we can go and we can say,
all he has to do to harden Pharaoh is leave him to himself. That's
exactly right. But it's still going to say the
same thing. He says, Pharaoh, he hardened,
and he did so to show his glory, that he did not have to show
Pharaoh mercy. He did not have to show those
Egyptians or those Canaanites mercy. He has mercy on whom he
will. You see, he's not obligated to
show mercy to anybody. When David took the throne, he
was not obligated to show mercy to anybody, and most especially
those in the house of his enemy Saul. But he said, is there not
one that I can show a kindness to or mercy to for Jonathan's
sake? They said, there's one fellow.
He lives down in the land of no pasture. He's looking for
you to search him out right now and have his head taken off.
He's lame in both his feet, has been since the fall from a nurse's
arms when he was fleeing the palace. His name is Mephibosheth. That just means destroying shame. David said, I'm going to have
mercy on him. That's the glory of God's mercy. He never looked
down at you or me especially. and saw that there was some good
in me. He never saw in me, myself, anything
but rebellion and sin and a fall in Adam. He never saw anything
positive. He'll never see it in any one
of us. So if He has mercy on it, it's
just because He'd have mercy on us. And that's what makes
this glory so glorious. He says, I will have mercy. And there's no reason for Him
to do so in us. But in the most wonderful of
wonders, He acts in His own prerogative, and He does just exactly that. And it's not a wonder that He
doesn't have mercy on all, it's the wonder is that He has mercy
on anybody. Why didn't He just leave us?
through ourselves. Why didn't He just leave us satisfied
in a God-denying false religion? Why didn't He just leave us so
proud of our flesh and our own, so satisfied with all that we
are and do? But He has pity on us. And this
mercy is a covenant mercy because He describes it there in Exodus
34. He describes Himself as keeping
mercy. In other words, that mercy that
He purposed to give to His people, He gave to them in that covenant
head that He's talking about here, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And there's no mercy outside of Him. You say, but what about
all these people? There's no mercy outside of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Well, what about this one that
does this? There is no mercy outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, God describes it in
this way in Isaiah 55. He says, "...incline your ear,
and come unto Me. Here and your soul shall live,
and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure
mercies of David. David, the adulterer, the murderer,
the disobedient king who said, when God described and he repeated
what is required of one who rules such as he did, he said, oh,
but it's not so in my house. What's your hope, David? That
He hath made with me an everlasting covenant. And it's ordered in
all things, and it's sure. You see, this is the sure mercies
of David, the covenant mercies which God blessed him with in
the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, and this is all my salvation
and all my hope. I don't have anything else. You
got anything else? I don't have anything else. Mercy. Turn over to Psalm 89. Psalm 89, look up in verse 24. This is how God talks. He says,
"...but my faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him." Now,
He's been talking about His servant David, but He's been talking
more so about the one of whom David's a type. the Lord Jesus. But my faithfulness and my mercy
shall be with him, and in my name shall his horn be exalted. I will set his hand also in the
sea, and his right hand in the rivers. He shall cry unto me,
Thou art my Father, my God, the rock of my salvation. also I
will make him my firstborn higher than the kings of the earth.
My mercy will I keep for him forever, and my covenant shall
stand fast with him." Talking about Christ there. All right,
look at the next verse. His seed. Christ has a seed. His people. His seed also will
I make to endure forever, and His throne as the days of heaven. If His children forsake my law
and walk not in my judgments, if they break my statues and
keep not my commandments, then will I visit their transgression
with the rod and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless, my
lovingkindness, will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my
faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break,
nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Once have I sworn
by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. His seed shall
endure forever, and his throne as the sun before me." Why? Because my mercy is a covenant
mercy. And just like David was merciful
to Mephibosheth for Jonathan's sake, God is merciful to His
people for Christ's sake. He says, "...for the mountains
shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall
not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace
be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy." on thee." You see,
Christ is the mercy. When Zacharias, who was the father
of John the Baptist, when his tongue was loose to where he
could brightly tell what the child was to be named and tell
what had happened and all this, you see, he laughed at the first
hearing that the wife of his old age was going to have a child.
God shut his mouth. But when he opened his mouth
again and he began to speak, he began to tell of all that
God was going to do in the Lord Jesus Christ, this child that
would be born of Mary. And one of the things was, he
said, he's come to perform the mercy promised. To perform the
mercy. Alright, here's the third question.
Why is God's mercy only in Christ. Why is God's mercy only in Christ? Well, if we remember the occasion
of our text here in Exodus 34, you see, God had given, and even
after their failure, He gave again His law. His standard never alters. And we have to always be reminded
of who He is and what He requires, and that He remains always the
same. And all that this did was represent
the very holiness and the justice and the righteousness of God.
Well, you failed. Well, let me just alter my standard
a little bit. That's what most people think.
They think God is in some way, if He doesn't do it for anybody
else, He's going to lower His standard. He's going to flex
His justice. He's going to act in a bit of
unrighteousness when He deals with them. You see, this people
Israel, they represented the true spiritual people of God.
And so when they failed, when they broke His law, and then
He turns again and speaks of mercy, what else does He do? He goes right back. He says,
Moses, bring some more tablets of stone, I'm going to write
the same thing on them again. But He never changes. When you
stop and think about what justice has come to in our day from the
day our country originated till today's day, it's sickening. God's not like that. You see,
if you look back in verse 7, where He talks about keeping
mercy, here in Exodus 34, He talks about keeping mercy for
thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, What's
that next thing he says? He said, but I'll by no means
clear the guilty. Someone wrote me an email and
asked me what I believed about what William Rushton says in
his book on particular redemption when he talks about the imputation
of guilt. Guilt. You know, when you think
about guilt, sometimes we think about something that's felt.
But not necessarily. So I went to look in Scripture
before I said anything. I went and looked at Scripture
to see what that word guilt means as it's used in the New Testament.
And it means liability. You see, you may not feel guilty,
but that doesn't change the fact you're liable. And the truth
is, the guilt of the sins of his people was imputed to Christ,
because the liability of them was. As a matter of fact, before
the world ever began, he assumed as the surety of that people
the liability of their sin. And that's what mercy is all
about. You see, we are, as they are,
in ourselves guilty before God, guilty of sin against Him, of
transgressing His law, guilty of not having loved Him with
all our heart. And He says here, "...visiting
the iniquities of the Father upon the children." Does that
mean that My child is going to have to be responsible for my
sin. That's not what it means at all. It simply means that
God deals with idolatry and sin and transgression in every generation
the same. Not less than 2011. That sin
brings a natural consequence. And that God punishes, and that
He must punish sin because He is a just God. You see, that's another
glory of God's mercy. His mercy is a just mercy. It
isn't like a judge standing up in the court, or sitting there
in a courtroom, and here's a man who's been charged with awful
crimes, and all of a sudden he stands before the judge, and
the judge says, well, you lawyers sit down, forget everything,
I'm going to have mercy on this man and turn him loose. That's
not a just mercy. And God who says here that he
will by no means clear the guilty. His mercy has to be a just mercy. And how can He show mercy and
yet deal with us as this holy and just God of heaven? There's
just one way, and that's in that substitute that He's appointed,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Because when He came into this
world, you remember what Zechariah said? It's to perform the mercy. What did he do to perform the
mercy, to carry out this mercy from God? He died in the place
of his people. The verse that describes this
in the most wonderful and to me clear way is in Psalm 85. It would seem to our logical
thinking that mercy On the one hand, if it be just, and truth,
on the other hand, as to who God is and what we are as sinners,
they can never be reconciled. But verse 10 says, mercy and
truth are met together, and righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Where in the world could righteousness,
which is justice, and peace between God and sinners kiss each other? Where did this happen? in the
cross death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because the sins of those
who are the objects of God's sovereign mercy were punished
in Christ. And He bore their sins in His
own body on the tree. Paul said He redeemed us from
the curse of the law being made a curse for us. And God forgives
iniquity and transgression and sin by imputing it to the Lord
Jesus Christ and then pouring out His holy wrath on Him. By mercy and truth, iniquity
is purged. You want to know something about
mercy? There He is hanging there on that cross. That's God's mercy. Alright, here's the fourth and
the last thing. When will a sinner seek mercy
in Christ? You know, a man stood by the
wayside. I'm sure more than that, but
one particular man. And in his wretchedness and his
blindness, he cried out, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy
on me. Well, you remember, mercy is
for the miserable. It's for those who see that they've
been enemies of God in their own minds. It's for the needy,
and yet none in and by themselves ever find themselves as such. Let me give you an example of
that in Matthew chapter 9. Matthew 9. Now here's mercy,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Matthew 9, look down at verse
10, it says, And it came to pass, as Jesus said at meet in the
house, Behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down
with Him and His disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it,
they said unto His disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans
and sinners? But when Jesus heard that, He
said unto them, They that behold need not a physician, but they
that are sick. But go ye and learn what it means. I will have mercy and not sacrifice. For I came not to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance." He said, I'm not talking to you.
I've not come for you. Because you're in your mind righteous. whole and healthy before God,
you don't need the great physician. You need to go and learn what
it means that this is all by God's mercy and not by your sacrifice,
not by what you do. You see, when you look at those
that Christ performed the miracles on in the New Testament, you
see that it's the blind and the halt and the beggars and the
pauces who cried out, Have mercy on me. And left to ourselves,
we see no need, we see not the mercy in Christ, and we want
not the mercy. But by God's mercy, some are
brought to cry out for mercy. And they cry out for this mercy
performed in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. When He brings
us to an end of ourselves, shows us our poverty, shows us our
utter sinfulness, and our inability, and our weakness, and our guilt,
and causes us to see the only help for us and the only hope
is His great mercy. Let me show you one more passage
in Ephesians 2. Paul writes to these Ephesians,
to these believers at Ephesus, and he says in verse 1 of Ephesians
2, "...and you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and
sins, wherein in time past you walked according to the course
of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,
the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience,
among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in
the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and
of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as
others. But God, who is rich in mercy,
For His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were
dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace you are saved." You
are all this, and satisfied with it, literally spiritually dead
in it, but God, who is rich in mercy, came where you are. wicked
you, made you alive." He writes to Titus, "...but after that
the kindness and love of God our Savior toward men appeared,
not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according
to His mercy He saved us." He is the Lord, the Lord God, merciful,
Gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth. You need mercy. I'll tell you
something about those who are saved by this mercy. They'll
never, after God reveals how He saves them in His mercy, they'll
never find themselves without the need of mercy the rest of
their days. Sometimes I just have to shake
my head as if and say, God, have mercy on me. Like that publican,
have mercy on me, the sinner. I need His mercy as much today
as I needed it the first day I ever knew anything about it.
Many sorrows shall be to the wicked, but he that trusteth
in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about. And that man David
I talked to you about, Here's what he says, Psalm 51, "...have
mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness, according
to the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions."
Now, the Lord is merciful, the Lord has tender mercies, the
Lord is tenacious in mercy, but only to those who need it. Pharisees
didn't need it. Most folks in our day don't need
it. But if you need it, it's in Christ. All His mercy is in
Christ. And if you have Him, you have
it. And it's a glorious mercy. Lord, we do pray for mercy. That
mercy that you give in Christ and set forth in His gospel. That mercy in which You can be
just and yet justify us through His satisfying every claim against
us. We look to Him for it. We thank
You for it. And we continue to pray. Have
mercy upon us. For we ask it in Christ's name. Amen.