Verse 7, 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 and to the third and
the fourth generation. These words here, as I said,
are spoken by God, and they are the fulfillment of the glorious
words he spoke in Exodus chapter 33 and verse 19. When Moses asked
the Lord to show him his glory, to show him his glory, Moses
had seen God do some mighty things. He had seen the cloud by day
He had seen the fire by night. He had seen God open up the earth
and swallow those who had worshipped the golden cat. He had seen the
Red Sea parted where it stood up congealed on both sides and
the Israelites walked across on dry land. He had seen Pharaoh's
army drowned in the bottom of that sea. He had seen the rock
that followed them through the wilderness. to give them water
he had seen all these things all these things and yet he says
to God show me your glory he knew that all those things as
great and as amazing and as wondrous as they were did not reveal God's
glory God's glory is infinitely tied to, completely tied to,
the salvation of His people. In fact, in John 17, when our
Lord prayed the high priestly prayer, when He said, Father,
glorify me, that I might glorify You. How is it that Christ will
glorify God so God can glorify Him? Or how is it that God will
glorify Christ? He said, as you have given me
power or authority over all flesh to give eternal life to as many
as thou hast given me. That simply means this, unless
Christ gives eternal life to all that God has given him, he
will not glorify God. He will not glorify God. It's
that simple. That's the equation that's set
forth in that passage of scripture. When Moses said, show me your
glory, show me your glory, the Lord said four things. I will
make my goodness pass before you. This is my glory, my goodness.
I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. That's the preaching
of the gospel. Our God was the first preacher
of the gospel, it says. in Galatians chapter 3 that God
preached the gospel to Abraham preach the gospel I will proclaim
the name of the Lord before you I will have mercy on whom I will
have mercy and I will have compassion or grace or I will be gracious
unto whom I will be gracious the Lord said I'm going to set
you in the cleft of the rock because you can't see what I'm
doing. You can only see what I've done. I'm going to show
you my hinder parts. So he set him in the cleft of the rock
and he passed by him and Moses saw his hinder parts of what
he has done. People like to think they know
what God is doing. And in one sense we can know
what God is doing. All we have to do is open up
the newspaper or watch the news. We can see what God's doing in
this world. It may not sit right with us. We may not understand
it, but this is what God's doing in the world. Moses says, you
can't see what I'm doing. You can only see what I've done.
And that's what we do when we preach the gospel. We don't tell
people what God is doing. We tell people what God has done.
He has accomplished the salvation of his people on Calvary's tree.
That's the good news to poor and wretched sinners who are
without hope and without help in the world. God showed Moses
his glory. His glory. Now it says he stood
upon a rock. He stood upon rock. We know that
rock is the Lord Jesus Christ. We know the riven rock is the
Lord Jesus Christ who was riven in his side. Here Moses sees
God who cannot be seen. Sees his hinder parts as he passes
by. Here Moses sees Christ as truth. personified. Here Moses is made
to understand how God will make his goodness known. How the name
of the Lord will be proclaimed. How mercy and grace will be shown
unto whom he will. These words are promised throughout
the scripture and are fulfilled on the cross of Calvary. Psalm
85 10 David said, Mercy and truth are met together here. Righteousness
and peace have kissed each other. This is the Lord heralding. heralding
His mercifulness. This is the Lord speaking. He's
heralding His mercifulness and His graciousness and His long-suffering
and His abundance of goodness and truth. Many would find no
difficulty in agreeing with the first part of this verse 7 as
surely a proclamation of the goodness of God. Yet they may
find difficulty in seeing that the last part of this verse is
also the proclamation of His goodness. says in verse seven
this is my goodness keeping mercy for thousands keeping mercy for
thousands and forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin and
this is my goodness i will know by no means clear the guilty
and i will visit the transgressions of the fathers upon the transgressions
of the children. People find difficulty with that
last part speaking of goodness. The human mind is naturally compelled
to pit justice against mercy, but in the Word of God they both
flow from the same sweet fountain of everlasting goodness. As far
as the goodness of God goes, the fact that He will in no wise
clear the guilty is just as much an expression of mercy as the
fact that he will keep mercy for thousands and will forgive
iniquity, transgression, and sin. Now those three words are
how sin is defined throughout scripture. David said in Psalm
32 that the man who is blessed, whose transgression is forgiven,
and whose sins is covered, and blessed is the man to whom the
Lord imputeth not or charges not with iniquity. Justice and
mercy need not be reconciled. They are best friends. They are
your salvation. justice and mercy. They are demonstrations of the
goodness of God, the proclamation of the Lord Jesus Christ, God
showing mercy on whom He will and God showing grace to whom
He will. It is clear from this divine proclamation that God
is not obligated to show mercy because men seek it, Religion
likes to diminish mercy to a kind of obligatory handout to men
as if to say that God is waiting with bated breath to show mercy
if someone will simply ask for it. It is common in this day
to hear preachers plead with men, let God show you mercy,
let God do this, let God do that. Men believe that if someone asks
for mercy that God is obligated to show it. Many ask for mercy
in this book and God did not show it. But this is the general
view of mercy. People think it's some kind of
anemic pool of kindness that people can stick their straw
in. Not a plastic straw, of course, unless you use a paper straw.
And they can dip a little bit out of it. But listen, one does
not let anyone show mercy. If somebody shows mercy to you,
you're not letting them show mercy to you. You best pray that
God will not wait on your contrition. to show mercy. You better hope
he don't wait on you. If you do, you'll never be shown
mercy. See, mercy belongs to the sovereign
God. It's part of his glory. I'm going to give his glory to
another. He said that I'll not share my glory with another.
It's my glory. I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. It
is God's to give or withhold. And no matter the circumstance,
if you seek mercy from anyone, from God or any human being,
the act of seeking is foremost an attribution of sovereignty
to the one from whom you seek mercy. If you're going to ask
for mercy, you can't say, I demand you give me mercy. You're obligated
to give me mercy. You can't say that. That ain't
mercy. If you want mercy, you've got to bow down and say, please
forgive me. And it's up to the person The
forgiver, whether he forgives or not. It's always that way. And so it is with God. Show me
any instance in Scripture where the ruined, the sick, the halt,
the lame, the leprous, the needy, they came to Christ in their
horrible condition, wounded and dying, and said to Christ, I'm
going to allow you to be merciful to me. Anybody say anything like
that in Scripture? Nobody. Well, neither did they
say, I'm here asking, therefore you're obligated to show me mercy.
Nobody said that either. Nobody came to Christ. You see,
the goodness of God, His long-suffering, is the salvation of His people.
In these words, we see the salvation that is of the Lord and not of
men, and how it is wrought out by God and His Son. And it's
important to remember that these words are spoken fast on the
hills of this people's idolatry. just days perhaps before, moments
before. The blood of 3,000 idolaters
still seeps in the sand at the base of Sinai where they made
that golden calf that the people wanted to have as a god. Now God had delivered them a
god they couldn't see. The God they couldn't see had
delivered them out of Egypt, had destroyed the greatest army
in the world, had divided the Red Sea, all of that for them.
And now they say, make us a golden calf. And they actually said
to that golden calf, or of that golden calf, after they had taken
off their earrings and their bracelets and their bits of gold
and had melted it and beat it in over this frame of this golden
calf, after they had done that, they actually said of this golden
calf, this is Elohim. That's the word they used. This
is our God that has delivered us out of Egypt. They made the
blame thing with their earrings and their bracelets. And they
called it the God who delivered them out. And God opened up the
sand. Moses threw a line in the sand
and said, who's on the Lord's side in this situation? You gonna
worship his calf or you gonna worship God? And some didn't
come. Three thousand said, we're going
to worship the cat. God opened up the earth and swallowed
them. God sent out, then God said for brothers and sisters
to take the swords on their hips. Moses did. It had to go out and
kill your brothers and sisters. God's going to get the glory,
you see. And right on the heels of this, right on the heels of
this, our Lord said, I will show mercy and keep mercy for thousands. That's my goodness, my goodness. The question should be asked,
how does God save sinners? Job said it this way, how can
a man that is born of woman be just or justified before God? How can a man be just with God?
He can't bring his own justification for Job goes on to answer that
very question. He says, if I offer him a thousand
reasons, he'll offer me ten thousand. He'll offer me ten thousand for
me not being justified. The last phrase of the text declares
three things. Mercy, forgiveness, and justice. And mercy and grace here are
tied together. These three things are the story of our salvation.
How does God save sinners? Mercy, grace, and justice. That's how He saves
sinners. First of all, mercy. I will keep
mercy. He said, I will keep mercy for
thousands. for thousands. He saves sinners
by keeping mercy for them. Here it speaks of keeping mercy
for thousands. This is actually a term of distinction. Thousands represent a large number
that does not include all. Mercy is not kept for all but
is kept for many, for thousands. It certainly wasn't kept for
those three thousands he's already sent down to the pits of hell
that he swallowed up in the earth. That number is sometimes used
in scripture to represent a company of men under one leader, the
term thousand. The word keeping means preserving,
preserving. In other words, God says that
he preserves mercy for thousands, for many, for that company of
sinners who are under the leadership of Christ, the captain of their
salvation. It may be kept for centuries.
before it is shown because it is God who preserves it. The
fact that it is kept by God reveals that he's in control of it. He's
keeping mercy. And he's the sole source of it.
There's no mercy outside of God. And he's the sole arbiter of
it. He gives it to whom he will. That's his glory. Some may find
that such an arbitrary dispensing of mercy by God is unpleasant
and unfair. I've had people tell me, that
makes God unfair. It don't make God unfair, it
makes God God. He does as He pleases, with whom
He pleases, when He pleases, wherever He pleases, and that's
just the whole ball of wax right there. God is not subject to
the whim of human nature or the depraved mind and neither is
He subject to those who don't even seek Him by nature. There
is none that seeketh after God. mercy, what is that? it has to
do with what you deserve I used to have a friend gone on to be
with the Lord now J.D. Butler very wealthy man, a very
dear man I'd call him on the phone and say how you doing J.D.?
he'd say better than I deserve better than I deserve what do
you deserve? do you know what you deserve?
honestly? You as a human being, born of
Adam into this world, born into sin, never seeking after God,
do you know what you deserve? Mercy has to do with what you
deserve. It has to do with keeping back from you what you deserve,
not giving you what you deserve. This being true indicts the recipient
of mercy as deserving something other than what they receive.
If you receive mercy, You're kept back from what you should
receive, or what you ought to receive. The recipients of mercy,
you see, according to scripture, deserve to die for their sins. That's what we deserve by nature.
That's what we deserve, to die. If then mercy acts in this manner,
the thought of deserving mercy is utterly foolish. Mercy keeps
us back from dying. from dying. That's what mercy
does. No man deserves mercy because
mercy has to do with keeping men from what they deserve. But
I hear people talking like, well, if anybody deserves mercy, nobody
deserves mercy. Mercy keeps us back from what
we deserve and we deserve an eternal punishment for our sin. It's impossible to deserve mercy.
God saves sinners by keeping back from them what they deserve.
Rest assured that if you have received mercy, This is true
about you. You deserve to die. If you have received mercy, it's
because you deserve to die. That's what mercy is. Grace also. Forgiveness of sins, he said.
Keeping mercy for a thousand, forgiving iniquity. Forgiving
iniquity. Iniquity is crookedness and we
are all just crooked. Ain't a straight one of us as
crooked as can be. God saves sinners by bestowing
grace upon them. Mercy keeps you back from what
you deserve. Note that no condition is placed
upon man. God said, I will be gracious.
I'm going to show forgiveness. I'm going to forgive. This text
does not say that God forgives conditioned upon repentance or
faith or the exercise of the will or decision. It doesn't
say anything about man doing something because man doesn't
do anything in the matter of God showing grace and mercy.
does not say he keeps and forgives, though clearly he does. He declares
that his goodness is defined by keeping and forgiving. And
that word forgiving means also bearing up. The same language
is used when it says the Lord was manifest to take away our
sins in 1 John 3. The Lord was manifest to bear
up under our sins. Take them upon himself. Take
them upon himself. what he does is forever and since
it's forever both mercy and grace are eternal attributes of God
as well as his continuing manifestation of it he is now keeping right
now he is now forgiving because he is always keeping and always
forgiving those thousands whom he intends to show mercy grace
is here expressed in an effectual sense With the use of the three
words that describe sin throughout scripture, God assures the sinner
that all his sin, every aspect of his sin is forgiven. The difference
between the Old Testament and the New Testament, the Old Covenant
and the New Covenant is this, the Old Covenant listed sins,
all kinds of sins. sins of omission, sins of commission,
sins of touching a dead thing, this, then, that, just tons of
sin were named. But in the New Testament, that's
not the way it's done. Christ died for our sins. What do you mean? All of them.
All of them. Our sins is an encompassing generic.
It takes care of every sin that we've ever committed or ever
shall commit. I said that one time to a fella. He called me
a few days later and said, I'll never hear you again. I said,
why is that? He said, because you said God
forgives us of our sins of the future. I said, He does, or you're
not forgiven for your sins of the future, and if your sins
of the future are not forgiven, you're going to hell. It's just
that simple. He gives us for all sins. Our
sin, whatever it may be. That's what Christ went to the
cross for. Grace is here expressing effectual
sins. God assures us, God assures us
that the sinner and all his sin is forgiven. Again, this grace
is not a commodity up for grabs, but an ongoing manifestation
of the goodness of God. All sin, whether manifest in
missing the mark or crookedness or breaking the law, is what
God is forgiving. That's what he said in Acts chapter
33 that made the Jews so mad, or Acts chapter 13. He said, be it known to you in
verse 38, unto you therefore men and women, men and brethren,
that through this man, through Jesus Christ, preached unto you
is forgiveness of sin, for by him all that believe are justified
from all things from which you could not be justified by the
law of Moses. Justified from all things. What does justified mean? Justified
simply means this, just as if I never sinned. Just as if I
never sinned. And we know we're sinners. We
know it in our mind and our heart. We know it in our thoughts. We
know it in our deeds and lack thereof. We know it in our lack
of love and abundance of hate. We know it in our anger rather
than our peace. We know all that. We know we're
sinners. If you're in Christ, all of it's forgiven. Every bit
of it. roll that over in your sinful
mind just for a few minutes. It won't last long but keep it
there as long as you can. Grace then is God giving to men
what they do not deserve. Mercy keeps us from what we do
deserve. Grace keeps us back. Grace gives
us what we can never deserve. We can never deserve. Men then
cannot deserve grace for it is freely bestowed upon the undeserving
That's who grace is for. If any think they deserve God's
favor, they know nothing of the grace of God. Nothing whatsoever. If any presume that they can
obtain grace by personal merit or by decision or by plea, they
know nothing of the grace of God. It's either grace or works,
the Lord said. If it's works, it can't be grace.
If it's grace, it can't be works. Romans 11, 5 and 6. Ephesians
2 and 9, by grace are you saved through faith and that not of
yourselves. It's a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should
burn. The cause of grace. What is it? It's God. It's in God. It's in His goodness. It's not
in you. Not in me. Unmerited favor. That means you can't merit it.
And that's the glory of grace for God sets these wretches,
these wicked, these depraved, these vile creatures, these maggots
on a dunghill, these worms of the dust as objects of His love
and objects of His grace and object of His mercy. And the
world says, that's crazy! We all know God saves good people.
No, He don't. He saves the vilest and the most
wretched. Why? To glorify Him keeping them
back from what they deserve and to glorify Him by giving them
what they do not deserve. This is mercy and this is grace. The third thing is justice. I
will in no wise clear the guilty. I will by no means clear the
guilty. That's a powerful phrase. If
I was to stop here I might think somebody would just be living
here without hope. Not helping this world. This is an enigma
however. All who are shown mercy and all
who are shown grace are by nature guilty sinners. Yet he says he
will in no wise clear the guilty. Yet he said I'm going to show
mercy and grace. In other words, part and parcel with the goodness
of God is that the guilty will not go unpunished. That's the
goodness of God, that He must punish sin. Lest any man think
that there might be an exception to this fact, God assures us
that this is not the case with the words, in no wise will I
clear the guilty. There will be no sin or sinner
that goes unpunished. That's what He's saying. Yet those who are sinners are
shown mercy and by grace are forgiven their sin This is a
wonder and an amazing thing in Jeremiah chapter 30 Verse 11 Jeremiah 30 verse 11 says this
for I am with thee saith the Lord to save thee and Though
I make a full end of all nations, whether I have scattered thee
yet, will I not make a full end of thee? For I will correct thee
in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished. You are going to have to be punished
for your sin. That is what justice requires. This does not sit well
with all that is holy and natural to humanity. It is against the
natural law of God. For the law says, Proverbs 17
15 says it is an abomination of God to clear the guilty and
to punish the innocent. It says that. The fact is this,
mercy and grace though undeserved is shown to those who before
God are guiltless. They're like, it can't be me.
It can if you're in Christ. Mercy and grace are shown and
besowed to those who have been punished for their sin. Proven
that they have been guilty. They're punished for their sin.
There's no understanding this at all. apart from the teaching
in the scripture of imputation and substitution, which was first
revealed in the Garden of Eden when the slaying of beasts to
cover the sinful pair. Every good blood sacrifice slain
throughout the time of the Old Covenant finally and fully accomplished
on Calvary's tree by the Son of God when He was made sin to
be for His people, they were made the righteousness of God
in Him. I can never fully grasp that. No human being can. This
is where, as Spurgeon said, when we stand in awe of the mighty
majesty and wonder of God Almighty, we bow down and believe in wonder. and praise and thanksgiving for
what he's done, because we can never really get it. How is the
spotless Lamb of God hanging on Calvary's tree made to be
sin for His people? How is it that all the sins of
all His people from all ages are made to roll and to meet
on Him? And how is it that He, the spotless
Lamb of God, who knew no sin, who never sinned, who is as harmless
as a dove, How is it that the perfect Lamb of God who never
would without spot or blemish, how is it He can be punished
for sin? He's punished for our sins. Stripes
are laid upon our transgressions because our transgressions are
upon Him. This is imputation. He was charged
with our sins. With the sins of His people,
with the sins of the elect, with the sins of the sheep, with the
sins of the church. He was charged with that. And
in that moment, in that moment, in those three hours of darkness
when we can't begin to imagine what sin really is because we
enjoy it too much. When sin was really manifest
for what it was, the human eyes could not behold it. God shut
down the sun for three hours so no man could see what it is
for God Almighty, perfect, holy, and pure before whom the sun,
moon, and stars are not pure in His sight. When He poured
out His wrath upon His Son for our sin, as justice was poured out, wrath
was poured out on the Lord Jesus Christ. and then wonder of wonders. That's not the only thing that
imputation teaches us. That because our sins were punished
on Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is to be our righteousness. We're made to be the very righteousness
of God and Him. Not guilty, you see. Christ bore
my guilt, the responsibility for my sin. And I bear His righteousness. Not of me. I didn't do either
one of those things. I didn't impute my sin to Christ.
I didn't impute God's righteousness to me. He did all that. That substitution is all because
of justice. There could be no understanding
of this apart from what is revealed in just imputation and substitution. Mercy is kept for thousands and
forgiveness is kept for thousands. They are reserved and preserved
for thousands until the thousands for whom they are kept are declared
righteous because they are cleared from guilt by the blood of the
bleeding substitute. I will not clear the guilty.
But you've been cleared. It must be that you're not guilty
if you've been cleared. Think about that. How good is that? For God to satisfy His own implacable
justice and set the sinner free? Because before Him, the sinner
is not guilty. Mercy and grace flow like a river when justice
says to the sinner, I find neither fault nor blemish in you. And
that's what has to happen. The law's got to set you free.
And the law don't set you free until the sentence is paid. Until
the debt is paid. So justice says, because Christ
took your sin, because you're made the righteousness of God
in Him, justice said, I don't see any fault in this guy. No
spot, no blemish, no wrinkle, nor any such thing. So in substitution,
the substitutionary death of Christ, God does not punish the
innocent, because Christ is made sin. and does not let the guilty
go free because they are made righteous in God. It's a wonder. It's an enigma. If you and I
have received mercy and grace, it is because we are not guilty
before God, because He will not clear the guilty. And if we are
not guilty before God, it is because we have been punished
in a substitute and not in ourselves. That's the sweetest thing for
sinners. Now, some may say, well, I don't care anything for that.
Well, I don't have anything for you then. I don't want anything
to do with that. I don't have anything for you.
I'm sorry. Just disregard everything I say going on, I reckon. Because
this is for sinners. The gospel is for sinners. And
finally, there's a word of warning here. A word of warning. Our Lord said
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and
upon the children's children of the third and fourth generation.
What in the world does that mean? For those who remain in their
idolatry, those who manufacture a god of their liking and then
suspend all rational thought and attribute saving power to
their handcrafted deity. You may see your children and
your children's children follow in your vile and wicked footsteps. the Targum of Jonathan said,
visiting the iniquity of ungodly fathers on rebellious children.
This is God's goodness, you see. Keeping mercy for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. That will by no means
clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon
the children and upon the children's children until the third and
fourth generation. This is God proclaiming the God who cannot
lie. God proclaiming what He has done. What He has done. Father bless
us to understand and pray in Christ's name. Amen.