Great Is His Mercy
Our Bible passage, introduction to Sunday 5th April service and hymns are below.
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Our principal verse is:
Psa 103:9 He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever.
Psa 103:10 He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
Psa 103:11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.
Psa 103:12 As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
Psa 103:13 Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.
Great Is His Mercy
The theme of God’s mercy runs through this psalm. In our verses today David returns to bless the Lord for His great mercy and love. David has already told us, ‘The LORD is merciful and gracious’ (v. 8). By these words the Holy Spirit teaches the church that God is patient, slow to anger and quick to forgive. In mercy He pardons iniquity and passes by the transgression of His people. Even when, for the sake of His moral rectitude, He chastises His beloved children, His chiding is for their good, applied gently and quickly over.
Forgiveness
The psalmist describes God’s mercy in terms of its effects; what it secures and grants to blameworthy sinners who deserve judgment. God has not dealt with us in justice as our iniquities deserve. Here David speaks of the extensiveness of God’s mercy using several very suitable pictures from nature to suggest the infinite dimensions of grace. He describes the privileged state of God’s elect in terms of the tender affection of the Father of mercies. God’s love is a fatherly love, full of pity, gentle and kind.
Redemption
David knows God’s mercy is founded on redeeming grace. He told us in verse four how the Lord, ‘redeemeth thy life from destruction’. Every blessing of divine goodness, every gift of sovereign grace granted by God to His people is bestowed upon the grounds of a just and suitable payment, the blood of Jesus Christ. God’s love and grace did not overlook sin. Holiness found a way to deal righteously with our iniquities by interposing a fit and suitable replacement. God found our Substitute in the person of His Son.
Nature’s testimony
David’s use of the natural, observable world to describe God’s character is striking. Perhaps only Job had drawn such elevated, poetic parallels before this time. In order to express the infinity of divine attributes David employs the vastness of the observable, airy heavens for height and distance to express his own sense of relief and freedom from guilt. ‘As the heaven is high above the earth’ and ‘as the east is from the west’, so far has God removed our sins from us, so great is His supply of pardoning grace.
Family love
And yet this remission from sin is intensely personal to a redeemed soul. As if to contrast the vastness of God’s mercy with the intimate personal experience of those who feel its effect David likens it to a father’s pity for his child. Pity here means love and affection. It is an active compassion that goes out from God for the care and deliverance of His children in need. But it is more, pity also speaks of sympathy. God stoops to help, He comes down to assist those who are too weak to help themselves.
God with us
Our Lord Jesus Christ is Emmanuel, God with us. Christ’s pity brought Him down to where we are, to meet us in our need that He might redeem and recover the children He loves. So great is the mercy of God that no distance was too vast, no need so severe as to inhibit the demonstration of God’s love and mercy towards His chosen, beloved people. There is no sense in David’s thinking or language about what man can do for God. It is all of grace, all God’s mercy and entirely founded upon the love He has for His own children.
Humbled trust
The only quality David identifies in the children pitied of God is filial fear. This is not terror but reverence and respect. It is the divinely-implanted awareness of the holiness and mercy of the divine Majesty and it motivates worship. Such fear acknowledges the rights of God as Judge but believes His word and hopes for salvation under a sense of dependence, reliance and trust. Those who fear the Lord know His power and strength. They are content to be still and await His deliverance.
A song of hope
David writes as a man filled with wonder that the holy Lord God can and does show mercy and forgive sin. His heart has been touched with a sense of awe and astonishment that such a God as the Lord will be gracious and loving to such a sinner as he. These sentiments are not unique to David. The fear, or reverence, of which the psalmist speaks implies that grounds for hope and faith in God’s free salvation are justified wherever guilt is felt and grace is desired. For, ‘Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage?’ (Micah 7:18).
Amen
Hymn 485
The Resurrection. 1 Cor. 15. 20, 55; Matt. 28. 2-7
C. Wesley 7s
1
Christ, the Lord, is risen today,
Sons of men and angels say,
Raise your joys and triumphs high;
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply.
2
Love’s redeeming work is done;
Fought the fight, the battle won.
Lo! the sun’s eclipse is o’er;
Lo! he sets in blood no more!
3
Vain the stone, the watch, the seal;
Christ has burst the gates of hell;
Death in vain forbids his rise;
Christ has opened paradise.
4
Lives again our glorious King;
Where, O Death, is now thy sting?
Once he died our souls to save;
Where’s thy victory, boasting Grave?
5
Soar we now where Christ has led,
Following our exalted Head;
Made like him, like him we rise;
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies!
6
Hail! the Lord of earth and heaven!
Praise to thee by both be given!
Thee we greet, triumphant now!
Hail! the Resurrection thou!
Hymn 464
Victory over Death. Hos. 13. 14; 1 Cor. 15. 55-57
I. Watts C.M.
1
O for an overcoming faith,
To cheer my dying hours,
To triumph o’er the monster, Death,
And all his frightful powers.
2
Joyful with all the strength I have
My quivering lips should sing,
“Where is thy boasted victory, Grave?
And where’s the monster’s sting?”
3
If sin be pardoned, I’m secure;
Death has no sting beside;
The law gives sin its damning power,
But Christ, my ransom, died.
4
Now to the God of victory
Immortal thanks be paid,
Who makes us conquerors, though we die,
Through Christ our living Head.
David is teaching the church about the mercy, grace and love of God in Christ. He explains the dimensions of mercy and the pity of God for those who love and honour Him in the Lord.