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“God’s Abundant Mercy“

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Gods Abundant Mercy

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 28, 1953

Just a little morsel from 1 Peter, that third verse of the first chapter. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Last week I talked on this, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Today I would speak on, according to His abundant mercy. Now Peter, just before he said, according to His abundant mercy, had blessed God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now we find there was a clear reason for the outburst. He blessed the Father because the Father had blessed us. If the Father had not blessed us, we could not possibly bless the Father. And if we had not been begotten again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, there would be no possibility of our blessing the Father. So, he said, blessed be the God and Father of Jesus Christ because He hath begotten us again, and He begot us again out of His abundant mercy.

Now I have pointed this out in order that we might see that there is always a clear link between one truth and another in the Bible; that if an apostle breaks out into a doxology, he wasn’t simply having himself a spiritual time. Look what went before, and look what follows, and you will find there were clear, logical reasons for the doxology.

And it is always so with New Testament Christians. The Spirit-led life is a clear, logical, and rational life. I must repeat what I said last Sunday night in a different context, that you and I must have the courage that belongs to our sound Christian faith, and we must stop this ignoble apologizing and cease to take this whipped Spaniel attitude out in the world. There is no reason why we should, like a paddled, cocker Spaniel, look sad and dreary and apologetic and cringe and crawl before the world. The world has nothing we want, and we have no cause to apologize to the world.

We are believers in a faith that is as well authenticated as any solid fact of life. And what we believe, and the links in the chain of evidence, are clear and rational. So that instead of apologizing, we should boldly assert, if we believed in ourselves and in the faith, we hold, with the fanaticism that the Communist believes in his devil-inspired doctrines, the Church could go off the defensive and go over to the offensive. Communists never apologize. Christians always do. And that’s why we’re where we are.

I’m glad that Brother McAfee had the ecclesiastical courage to announce and join in singing a song that’s an Easter song. I think that it’s time we rescue some of these great songs from one Sunday a year, give them back to the Church where they belong. The Church has a right to rejoice. Christ the Lord is risen today, and our Son sets in blood no more. Marvelous imagery, marvelous scriptural imagery that Wesley wove into that hymn. And if we half believed it, we’d go off the defensive and go over to the attack.

And so instead of crawling before the world and apologizing in low, subdued tones before the learned world, we would frankly and boldly assert that Jesus Christ is risen, and what are you going to do about that great fact?

I say that Peter blessed the Lord God, but he wasn’t simply letting himself go like an old lady in a camp meeting. There were particularly sound theological reasons for saying, Blessed be the Lord. He blessed Him because He had begotten us again, and because it was through His abundant mercy that He did it. And the hope He had begotten us to, was a living hope, not a dead one.

I point out that the Spirit-led Christian life is not according to whim or impulse or a caprice, and yet I know Christians who feel you cannot be spiritual without being capricious, and that the more impulsive you are, the more spiritual you are.

I remember years ago, I haven’t heard of him now for a long time, he petered out the way they all do, but he was a very popular healing evangelist, and he just oozed in or tumbled in to his meetings, just tumbled into them, never knew what anybody was going to do. And he was too busy running around to ever plan anything, so he just sort of tumbled and stumbled into the meetings and muddled through them.

And because he was like that, they advertised him as a man of lightning changes. Why, they said, this brother is just as likely to get up and take the offering before they sing the first hymn, or he’s just as likely to get up and preach the sermon and then have a hymn. You never know what he’s going to do.

Well, brother, I don’t know. These men of lightning changes. Sometimes it’s a cover-up for laziness and poor planning and lack of thought. Sometimes it’s simply temperament. They’re usually no good in the Church of Christ, and they wouldn’t be any good if they worked for Ford or General Motors either.

Imagine if you will, a fellow who would say to the boss at General Motors, no, Mr. Jones, I’m one of these impulsive fellows, you never know what I’m going to do, I’m a man of lightning change. Someday I may be out at seven in the morning, and other times it may be three in the afternoon. Sometimes I may go to my machine, and another time I may push another fellow out and take his machine. I just follow the leading of the Spirit. You know how long he will last? He just lasts long enough to get his pay and get out of there. You can’t run things on these impulsive, changeable, and constantly changing men of lightning changes.

There was nothing like that among the apostles. They were Spirit-led, and they were likely to do always what God wanted them to do. But somehow or other, it so turned out, as it properly should, that what God wanted them to do perfectly fit in with the total scheme of redemption and the whole will of God in the New Testament. So that there was no place for the temperamental, whimsical fellow.

Peter was no good to God until he got over being whimsical and temperamental. As long as he was temperamental, scolding the Lord of glory for this or that, he was no good to the Lord. He was a pest. But when he got filled with the Holy Ghost and got a vision or two and got suffering a little and kicked out of a few places and leveled down, then he became the great apostle, second only to Paul in the New Testament. But God had to take lightning changes out of Peter and settle him down into the harness where he could work for the Lord.

I say there are those who feel that if it isn’t queer, it isn’t spiritual, if it isn’t capricious, it isn’t of the Holy Ghost. But I notice a clear, logical link between everything anybody said in the New Testament and the reason they said it, always. So that we are not victims of caprice, neither are we victims of the weather, nor are we victims of the state of our health. Mr. McAfee coughed all night last night, but he’s still around. And occasionally I feel tired, but I’m still here. And I don’t like sticky weather, but you have to go right on, brother. You can’t show up at the house of God just when it’s 70 and the humidity 31. You got to go to church no matter. And it’s the same with prayer. You have to pray.

One man said that you’re supposed to go to God and be honest with God. He said, when you go to prayer, you go and be honest. I said, tell God the truth. One other man said, when you go to prayer and you feel that the whole thing bores you, he said, don’t hide it, tell God frankly, God, I’m bored with this whole business. He said, God will forgive you and bless you and straighten you out and get you started right. But the main thing is, be honest and pray no matter whether you feel like it or not.

So that was the way Christians did things. They didn’t, they weren’t victims of moods. And if you knew the whole truth, there are very few Christians whose moods are entirely up on a high level and sustained level.

Sometimes people come to me and they say, Brother Tozer, they call me up and say, could I have a half hour with you? It usually turns out to be an hour and a half and two hours, and I say, sure, come on over. So, they’ll come over. He’ll say to me, Brother Tozer, I believe I’m a spirit-filled man, I’ve been filled with the Holy Ghost, I’m all on the altar, I’m consecrated, but there’s one weakness I’d like to have you tell me how I can correct. I don’t always have the same degree of feeling and spirituality. Sometimes I’m up and sometimes I’m a little down, and there doesn’t seem to be always that high level, what can I do about it?

And I say, I wish you’d tell me, because I don’t know either, and I haven’t read a biography that I can think of, unless it was Francis of Assisi. I might except him, but outside of him I don’t know any honest Christian that ever can get up and say, I live a consistently high level, I fly at an altitude of 16,000 feet all the way.

Now, if any of you would get up and say, Mr. Tozer, I have lived for 19 years now and never have ceased that high level, blessed art thou, and I honor you, but I have never reached there, pray for your pastor, because there are times when my liver’s out of order, and there are times when I come to my study with no more desire to pray than a horse, but a little while with the Scriptures, and a little while with the hymn book and you’re back in prayer habit again.

And I don’t mean to leave the impression that you are always up and down, because that does not accord with what I said at first, but I only mean to say that we are men and women who live according to the high logic of spiritual truth, not according to our feelings.

The old writers talked about what they called a frame. They would put an entry in their diary, it was a very happy frame this morning, praise the Lord, and maybe two weeks later there’d be an entry, it was a very low frame this morning, it felt very depressed, but nothing had changed except their frame.

And one hymn writer says, I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name, and I’ve gone before audiences now and again and said, now please, anybody who knows, stand and tell me, I’ll give you a minute to tell me, what does the writer mean when he says, I dare not trust the sweetest frame, and I’ve never found anybody that knows? Well, we say it a little differently, we say frame of mind, it’s the same thing. Say, oh, he was in a happy frame of mind this morning, wasn’t he? Say, she was in a very sad frame of mind. And the writer says, I dare not trust the sweetest frame of mind, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

So you see, brethren, you and I live according to a wholly high spiritual logic, and not according to shifting frames of mind. Amen? Now, that’s very unspiritual doctrine, some people don’t like that. They say, oh, you’ve got to be blessed all the time, happy, happy, happy, happy.

But if they would just quit lying and tell the truth, they’ll have to admit there are days when they’re not so happy, happy as they were the day before. But don’t let it get you down, just read your Word and pray and sing a song and take the means of grace and you’ll be as happy today as you were yesterday.

Now it says here, and this is what I want to really get at, according to his abundant mercy. Whatever God did and whatever he’s doing is according to his abundant mercy, and we have the adjective abundant here to modify the word mercy. It describes God’s mercy.

And you know that word abundant comes from a Greek word which at least has these associated meanings. It means largest number, it means very large, it means very great, it means much, and it means many. Now it can mean all those things. According to his largest number, his very large, very great, much, many mercies, God has begotten us again.

And let me give you a note here on that word, abundant, that everything God has is unlimited. That is, God being infinite, everything about Him is infinite, which means that it has no boundary anyplace. Now that’s hard for you to think.

I remember I preached on the infinitude of God here one time, and only one man, and that was Brother Kramer, came down, congratulated me and told me he’d gotten my sermon. But so far as I know, everybody else just wrote that one off. But you and I need to get hold of that, and even if it hurts your head, you need to get hold of that. It’s good for you to know that God is infinite, unlimited, boundless, with no posts anywhere saying this is the end. There’s no such posts in the universe. God Almighty fills it and overfills it, and He is infinite and unlimited.

So that we do not need any enlarging adjectives. When we say God’s love, we don’t need to say God’s great love, although we do say it. When we say God’s mercy, we don’t need to say God’s abundant mercy, though we do say it. And the reason we say it is to cheer and elevate our own thoughts, not to tell that there is any degree in the mercy of God. There are no degrees in the mercy of God, there couldn’t be, for God is degree-less, limitless and infinite.

Therefore, when you say God’s mercy, you’re talking about that which is so vast that the word vast doesn’t describe it, because it has no limits anywhere. Its center is any place, and its circumference nowhere.

Now, these adjectives are useful when we talk about earthly things. We talk about the great love of a man for his family. We talk about little faith, or great faith, or much faith, or more faith. We talk about wealth, and we say he was a man of considerable wealth. But if he has a little more tucked away somewhere, we say he is a man of great wealth. But if his bank account is still larger, we say he’s a man of very great wealth. And if he really owns it, we say he’s a man of fabulous wealth. So we go anywhere up and down the scale from considerable to fabulous.

Do you know where you belong on this, in this scale, because wealth, human wealth, is that which may vary up and down the scale from practically nothing at all to so much you can’t count it. But when we come to God, there is no such degreeing of things. When we say that God is rich, God’s riches, we include all the riches there are. God isn’t richer, or less rich, or more rich, He’s rich. So He isn’t more merciful, less merciful, He’s merciful. For whatever God is, He is in fullness of unlimited grace.

But you say, then, why does the word abundant occur here? Why does it say His great love, wherewith He loved us? Those adjectives are put in there for us, not for God. It was in order to elevate our minds to the consideration of the vastness of the unlimited mercy of God, that Peter said it was abundant.

Now, God’s mercies are equal to God. And for that reason, all comparisons are futile. God’s mercy is equal to God. And if you want to know how merciful God is, then you will know, just see how great God is, and see God, and then you’ll know how merciful God is.

I remember Brother Kopp telling us, missionary to Africa, telling us about a deacon in the church in Congo, a great, big, fine fellow. And he, of course, had the job of disciplining these converts. And one young convert hadn’t gotten all the devil out of him yet, and he inclined to break the rules and do things he shouldn’t.

And they disciplined him and disciplined him again and again, and finally this big, strapping Christian deacon called in his erring brother. And he said, Now, brother, you have been failing us and disappointing us, disgracing your Christian calling about enough. Now when we started with you, we had a bottle of forgiveness. But I’m here to tell you, young man, that bottle is just about empty. And we’re just about through with you. The missionary got a chuckle out of that. He thought it was a very quaint and picturesque way of explaining that they were about done with that fellow.

But you know that bottle of forgiveness that God has, has no top nor bottom to it. And God never says to a man, never, and never has said to a man, now, the bottle of my mercy is about empty.

God’s mercy doesn’t run out of a bottle. God’s mercy is God acting the way He acts toward people, and therefore we can say that it is abundant mercy. And I might point out something here which you may have overlooked, that every benefit God bestows is according to mercy.

You know, there’s a sort of a pardonable heresy abroad that God deals with some people in mercy and some in justice. But God deals with everybody in mercy. If God did not deal with everyone in mercy, we would all have perished before we had time to be converted. We float on a vast, limitless sea of divine mercy. And it’s the mercy of God that sustains the worst sinner. If we have life, it is according to the mercy of God. If we have protection, it is according to the mercy of God. If we have food, it is God’s mercy that gives us food. And if we have providence to guide us, it is God’s mercy.

David said, Have mercy upon me and hear my prayer. Was he just using words? No. Again, a sound, clear, logical statement of theological fact. According to Thy mercy, hear my prayer. Mercy even enters into the hearing of prayers. Mercy must enter into the holiest act any man can ever perform.

And it is a constant mercy on the part of God. The fact that I’m sane instead of somewhere committed to an institution is an act of mercy on God’s part. The fact that I’m free and not in prison is a mercy of God. The fact that I’m alive and not dead is God’s mercy over me. And the same for you, and the same for every man, Jew and Gentile and Mohammedan, whether they believe it or not.

So, you and I float in a sea of the mercy of God. I admit it’s when we enter the sanctuary. I admit it is when you come across the threshold into the kingdom of God that mercy becomes sweet, and we identify it and recognize it. And it’s certainly intensified and pointed up, and it’s through His mercy that we’re begotten again, but that same broad mercy of God kept that sinner through maybe fifty years of rebellion.

My father was sixty years old when he was born again. Sixty years! He had sinned and told dirty stories and sworn and lied and cursed, and then he gave his heart to the Lord Jesus Christ and was converted and is in heaven.

And the mercy that took my father to heaven is a great mercy, and we celebrate the mercy that took him there. But it is no greater than the mercy that kept him and endured him sixty years.

I’ve told this story before, but it perfectly fits here. An old Jewish rabbi in Old Testament times, a man came to his door and asked to stay overnight. It was dark, and he was a traveler, and he said, I’ve made it to your house, could I stay overnight? The old rabbi said, sure. He said, you’re a very old man, aren’t you? He said, I’m nearly a century old. He said, all right, you can come in and stay overnight.

The old man came in, they sat around and talked, and the rabbi said, what about your relation to God? What about your religion? Oh, me? He said, I don’t believe in God. Well, he said, I don’t have any faith in God at all, I’m an atheist. The rabbi rose and opened the door and said, get out of my house. I won’t keep an atheist in my house overnight. The old man got up and hobbled to the door, and the door was shut again.

The rabbi sat down by his candle and his Old Testament, and a voice said to him, son, why did you turn that old man out? He said, I turned him out because he’s an atheist, and I can’t endure him overnight. And God said, son, I’ve endured him nearly a hundred years. Don’t you think you could endure him one night? He leaped from his chair and rushed out, took the old man in his arms and brought him back in and treated him like a long-lost brother. It was the mercy of God that for one hundred years nearly, had endured that old atheist.

So, the mercy of God endured my father fifty years, and the mercy of God endured me seventeen years and then has endured me all the years since. So, let’s get away from this semi-heretical idea that God deals with some people in mercy and deals with others in justice. He deals with everybody in mercy. Everybody is dealt with in mercy. The Bible plainly declares it, it says here that His mercies, the Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works, 145th Psalm. God never violates mercy.

I can see the more I pray and read my Bible and think, the more, I’ve got to write my book on the attributes of God. I got to do it. I hope God will let me live that long. But this idea that God works according to one facet of His nature one day and according to another facet and another is all wrong, God never violates any facet of His nature. When God sent Judas Iscariot to hell, He did not violate mercy. And when God forgave Peter, He did not violate justice.

But everything God does He does with the full protection of all of His infinite attributes. So, when a sinner, though he lived to be a hundred years old and sinned against God every moment of his life, he is still a partaker of the mercy of God. He still floats on a sea of mercy, and it is from the mercy of God that he is not consumed.

Now there will be a day when the sinner will pass out from the realm where God’s mercy supports him, and he will hear a voice depart from Him, I never knew you, ye that work iniquity. And hell will be the just desert, justly apportioned to those who refuse redeeming mercy. But there has been a providential mercy that has kept the sinning man all his lifetime.

So we Christians, we didn’t come in through the door of mercy and then live apart from that door. We are in the room of mercy, and the very sanctuary is a sanctuary of mercy. And God has had mercy upon you all your life, sir. We must not become self-righteous and imagine we are living such wonderful lives that God blesses us because we are good. That’s not so. God blesses us because of his abundant mercy which He bestowed on us, and not because of any goodness, though He is busy making us good.

I do not believe that even heaven itself will ever permit us to forget that we are recipients of the mercy of God. The very angels that are around the throne are there because of the goodness of God. The very seraphim with their six wings are there because of the goodness of God.

So, you and I will never be permitted to forget Calvary. A little old morbid song says, lest I forget Gethsemane, lest I forget dark Calvary, but there’s a modicum of truth in it at any rate.

We must never forget that we live because God is merciful. We are recipients of the mercy of God. I am here this morning because God has been merciful to me, not because I am a good man. Although God wants His people to be holy as He is holy, He does not deal with them according to the degree of their holiness, but according to the abundance of His mercy. Honesty requires us to admit this. I pray that we may all be perfectly honest and admit it.

Now, the unjust man will soon pass from mercy to judgment. A hundred years the old atheist sinned against his God, and God was willing to bear with him overnight yet. But the day will be when the old atheist will die and pass from mercy to judgment.

So, I believe in justice, and I believe in judgment. I believe that the only reason mercy triumphs over judgment is that God, by a divine omniscient act of redemption, fixed it so man could escape justice and live in the sea of mercy. The just man, that is, the man who believes in Jesus Christ and who was born anew and who is a child of God, lives in that mercy always. The unjust man lives in it now in a lesser degree, but the time will come when he will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish. For the unjust sinner, though he is kept by the mercies of God, kept from death, kept from insanity, kept from disease, kept a lifetime through the mercy of God, yet he will violate that mercy, turn his back on it, and walk into judgment. And then it’s too late for the man, for the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment. But in the meantime, you and I stand in the mercy of God.

So, remember, when you kneel down to pray, don’t do like the man who went to the altar. He said he got down on his knees, he was under terrible, blistering conviction, and he had learned the Ten Commandments when he was a younger fellow. He got down on his knees there and he began to talk to God about his sins. He had them numbered, I mean, the Ten Commandments numbered. He said, Now, Father, now, God, remember, I admit I have broken number one, number four, number seven, but remember, Father, I kept number two and number three, number six. How foolish, how unutterably foolish. We should go to God and dicker with him like that. We should go to God like a storekeeper and portion out our goodness.

I’d rather follow old Thomas Hooker, the old Puritan saint. He came to die, and he’d been a man elevated way above the average in his spiritual life and holy living. They said, Brother Hooker, you go to receive your reward. No, no, no, he said, I go to receive mercy. Brother Hooker went out, although he rated high up in the level of holy men, he went out not to look for his reward, but to look for still more of the mercy of God.

So, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy, oh, I think that’s about enough, the sun shines on the just and on the unjust, and we float along in a glorious, shimmering sea of the limitless, boundless, infinite mercy of the Lord our God. How wonderful is God’s mercy.

I remember years ago I preached on the text, Thou, God, forgivest sin. Thou art a God who forgivest sin. I didn’t know it, but a woman was present, and some long time afterward she told me. I got it somehow through a letter, telephone conversation, or some way. She said, That night, that night, as you repeated the text, Thou, God, forgivest sin. That night I believed God, and my sins were pardoned, and I’m a Christian now.

What could I say more than this? Thou art a God of abundant mercy, so don’t look in at yourself, look away. Fennelin said, trying to straighten yourself up and fix yourself over? No, it won’t do. Come as you are.

With this I close. Paul Rader told about the artist. He wanted to paint a picture, for some reason he had in his head, to paint a picture of a tramp, a real tramp, a bum off the street. We’re talking about all the time down here in Skid Row.

So he went to Skid Row, and he hunted up the most disreputable, run-down-at-the-heel, frayed, dirty, disheveled, ungroomed bum that he could find. And he said, I’d like to have you come to my studio. I want to paint you. His face brightened up, his old, baggy, bleary eye took on a new light. He said, you mean you want to put me in a picture? He said, Yeah, I want to paint you into a picture. Would you come? He said, yeah. How much will it mean to me? Well, he said, I’ll tell you. I’ll give you a good fee. He said, I’ll want you to come several times. He said, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you $25 now, and here’s my address. You show up there tomorrow morning, and I’ll tell you what to do.

The next morning the doorbell rang, and the artist went to the door. Here stood a fine-looking fellow with a white shirt on, clean tie, haircut, new hat, and his pants having a reasonable facsimile of a press. He said, good morning, what can I do for you? He said, don’t you know me, boss? He said, I’m the set from a picture this morning. The artist said, are you the fellow I hired? He said, yeah. He said, I didn’t want to come to your fine place looking like a bum, so I spent this $25 getting myself fixed up. The artist said, I can’t use you. He said, goodbye. He dismissed him. He wanted him as he was.

Two men went up into the temple to pray, and one said, Here I am, God. I’m all fixed up. Every hair is in place. And the other one said, O God, I just crawled in off a skid row. Have mercy upon me. God forgave the skid row bum and sent the other man away hardened and unforgiven. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again.

So come just as you are, friends, and God will show you what to do. He’ll straighten you out. There’s no contradiction there in the slightest between what I’ve said now and all my preaching on repentance. For God does require repentance, as I’ve said many times. But that’s something else again. And when the human spirit comes to God feeling that it’s better, more acceptable, it automatically shuts itself out from God’s presence.

But when the human spirit comes to God knowing that anything it gets will be mercy, then repentance has done its proper work. God will forgive and bless that man and take him into His heart and teach him that all God’s kindness is through mercy.

You go out on the sidewalk; mercy lets you stand there. You greet your friend with a sane mind and a clear voice, mercy gave you that. You go sit down to a good meal; mercy gave you that meal. You rest on a nice soft couch this afternoon, take a little nap, mercy gave you that. You get up and go to your work, mercy did that for you. We’re all recipients of the mercy of God. The Christian knows it and has taken that mercy and used it, so to speak, to assure his abundant entrance into the kingdom of God.

The sinner is a recipient of God’s providential mercies, too. But he tramples it under his feet and prepares himself for an endless hell. Which are you doing?

Father, we pray, bless thou this truth, O God, thy mercies are abundant. Are not thy mercies full and free, and have they not, O God, found out me? We thank Thee for Thy mercies, Thy many abundant, full mercies.

Now we pray that Thou wilt help us to lean back upon Thy mercy and trust and not be afraid, hate sin and love righteousness, flee from iniquity and follow after godliness. But always know that in all that we do, mercy is around us like the air underneath us as the earth, above us as the stars.

And we live in a merciful world to serve a merciful God, and live and swim and move and have our being in the abundant mercies of the triune God. Graciously grant us, we pray thee, properly to understand this and to apply it to our hearts. And we’ll give Thee praise through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

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“Blind Bartimaeus-Seeking and Receiving Help“

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Blind Bartimaeus-Seeking and Receiving Help

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 17, 1956

Tonight, I want to talk to you about blind Bartimaeus. And I’ll read a passage from 10th of Mark: When they came to Jericho, and as He went out of Jericho with His disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging. And when He heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called. And they call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.

Now, verse 46, says they came to Jericho. And if you will remember, Jericho was the city of the curse. It was so known as the city of the curse; Joshua had declared it to be so. That if ever rebuilt by the firstborn of the man who had built it. And it so came to pass and became the city of the curse. And yet here was the great God Almighty, that had formed the earth in the hollow of His hand. That had, as the poet said, flung the stars to the most far corners of the night. And here was this great God Almighty, and he was walking into the city of Jericho, the city of the curse.

And I don’t know, but it would be the last place you’d expect God to be. You know, brothers and sisters, we sissified Christians imagine that God only goes to church. There isn’t a harlot house in this town, that God isn’t present at tonight. There isn’t a smelly, smoke-filled saloon in Chicago, that God Almighty isn’t there. And there isn’t a jail in this whole city, where the Lord God isn’t. Because it says in verse 45, the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many.

Now, that was why the great God Almighty was in the city of the curse, because He was the Son of Man, part and parcel of the human race, for better or for worse, and it turned out of course, to be for better. And He came to minister and to give His life a ransom for many. And there wasn’t any depth He wouldn’t go to. There wasn’t anywhere that He wouldn’t be found.

So, this great God Almighty, comes into this city of the curse. And as He traveled along and went out of Jericho with His disciples and the great number of a hangers-on following along behind them, why, we come to blind Bartimaeus, junior, he was, because to me, this was his father’s name and Bar means he was the son of. So he was to me his junior and he had been born blind. Poor Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus.

Now I don’t want to press this, my friends at all. But I wonder whether there isn’t something subtly suggestive about this fact that this man was the son of somebody and was found in the city of a curse and was found blind and was named after his father. That’s sort of indicating a hereditary descent. I don’t know that the old gentleman was blind, but I know that his great great great grandfather Adam was. I know that Adams eyes were put out in that hour.

When he looked upon the fruit and found it very desirable and did take and did eat and knew that he was naked. In the hour that he saw that he was naked, he ceased to see God and eternal things. And here all down the centuries later, there was one of his poor, blind descendants still blind and this one physically blind, and he was sitting by the highway side begging. Now not everybody in Palestine was a beggar, though there were many of them. And not everybody in Chicago is a beggar when it comes to the the economic or social side of it. But everybody is a beggar. After all, when you go really back to the root of things, I wonder where we get our pride. Human pride grows like dandelions or ragweed. It doesn’t have to have any reason for growing.

Moody told about the little girl who took chips and strung them on a string and put them around her neck in the slums and strutted around among the other little girls who didn’t have any little string of chips around her neck. And Moody illustrated the fact that human pride doesn’t have to have an origin or a source nor a reason, it just grows there indigenously. It doesn’t come from anywhere. It’s simply there.

And there isn’t a one of us, not a one of us from President Eisenhower down to the poorest tramp that’s sitting tonight with his feet hanging over the curb, half-drunk down on Skid Row, not one, but is a supplant at the gate of God Almighty. He sits a beggar on the highway of life. He sits in this great city of the curse, a blind man begging. There isn’t a one I tell you, the prince of Monaco or the Queen of England, or any of the great and mighty whose names are on the front of Time Magazine and in all the newspapers, not a one of them, but dwells in the city of the curse and is blind, and begging. Because they beg every breath of air from God and there isn’t a breath of air that God doesn’t give them.

And God says their breath is in their nostrils. That Old Testament passage was always to me, the most, most significant and meaningful passage. He told the man of God, he said, don’t be afraid of that fellow. His breath is in his nostrils. Take his breath out of his nostrils for a minute and a half and he’s finished. That’s all there is to him, His breath in his nostrils. And where does he get it? He borrows it from God Almighty, begs it from God. And the water that composes his body, 70% of it he gets and begs from God Almighty. And the food that he takes in to nourish his tissues, he begs from God Almighty.

And the light of reason that blazes in his brain is borrowed or begged from God Almighty. And everything that he has he got from God. That’s why, it seems to me that pride is a cancer on the human soul. Because it is a wild indigenous growth that doesn’t belong there and shouldn’t be there. Because there’s nobody that has anything to be proud of. Why should the spirit of a mortal be proud? Like a fast flying meteor, a fast flying cloud, flash of the lightning or breaking the wave and he goes from his home to his rest in the grave. That was one of Lincoln’s favorite poems. And it’s still true. So, what have we to be proud of? And isn’t that the way all of us are?

Now we’re living in high times, and everybody’s making more money than he should. And we’re spending it faster than we should and we’re living, we call it the American way of life and a high standard of living. Our fathers would have called it extravagance carried to the point of sin. But be that as it may, we’re very likely to get the idea that we amount to something. And one of the sweetest and most wonderful things that can happen to you and me is to find out we’re not. That we dwell in a world that lies under the shadow of a curse.

It’s hard to believe that this beautiful land of ours with its broad highways and its flowing rivers and it’s smoking factory chimneys and it’s millions of automobiles running into billions of dollars and it’s great halls of learning, ivy clad and it’s great newspapers and it’s music and it’s radio and television and all the rest. It’s hard to believe that this lovely, great world of ours lies under the shadow of a curse, but it does. For God’s said to man that the day that thou eatest thereof thou shall surely die and said to man afterwards, with the sweat of your face you shall earn your daily bread.

So, we live under the shadow of a curse. We ought to live our lives remembering that. Don’t let anybody kid you out of it. Don’t let any positive thinkers or any of these pepper uppers and cheerer uppers think you out of it. We live in a country and in a land and in a race that’s under the shadow of a curse and a threat of judgment to come. Well, that was Bartimaeus. That isn’t the type and I don’t claim it is a type. It’s merely an illustration and that’s all I’m doing with it tonight. But here was the man Bartimaeus. And he heard it was Jesus of Nazareth. When he heard it was Jesus, I tried to think tonight about this and how many there were that heard it was Jesus of Nazareth?

I remember a passage that moved me very greatly. I can get blessed. The old brother said, God blesses me on slight provocation. And I can get blessed on some of the most unlikely passages. There is one in the fifth chapter of Acts that said that when He had seated Himself, He opened His mouth. And I thank God for the last, I guess, 25 years that Jesus Christ ever opened his mouth? What would it have been like if Jesus kept His mouth shut? If He had never opened His mouth. If He being God Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible, had been incarnated in the form of a man, who had grown to manhood, and then looked the human race over and been shocked into silence. What a tragic, terrible, irreparable loss to the human race. But He opened his mouth.

Thank God, He opened his mouth. And He opened His mouth, and He taught people and He said things. He opened His mouth, and He corrected the errors. He opened His mouth, and He spiked lies. He opened His mouth and He let in life. He opened His mouth, and He informed us. He opened His mouth, and He instructed us. He opened His mouth. Now, I’m blessed on that passage that Jesus Christ came to the world and opened his mouth.

But why wouldn’t He? He was called the Word. And the Word was made flesh to dwell among us, and why wouldn’t the word open His mouth? There is no such thing as a silent word. How could there be, since that word means an uttered thought, not a word printed, but an uttered thought? Then he had to open His mouth. And when He opened His mouth, you know, the first word He uttered? Tell me. In that fifth chapter, blessed, blessed, blessed. The first word He uttered was blessed. Of course it would be blessed. Here was the Blessed One come from the realm of the blessed to bless mankind. So, His first word He uttered when He opened his mouth was blessed.

Well, now I see another passage here that he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth. And I have been wondering how many there were that heard about that, that Jesus was in that city of the curse. He would have been morally justified if He had withdrawn from the city of the curse and gone to the temple and gone to the holy place and sat down between the wings of the cherubim. The Ark of the Covenant was not there at the moment. But He could have gone into that holy place, and there dwelt the only clean and living place there was, but He didn’t. He was seen walking around among people seeing where the people were.

One of the tricks of the devil is to frighten us by self-accusation. We always think other people are better than we are. And that if everybody was like us there wouldn’t be any Christians. And we know ourselves so well and we know our faults and flaws as sinners. And then we say, well, surely God wouldn’t be interested in you and me. But the simple fact is that is exactly what Jesus Christ came to get interested in. He was interested and that’s what brought Him to the world in the first place because we were sinners. For He said in verse 45, again, I repeat, the Son of Man didn’t come to be ministered unto and be carried around on a golden chair. He came to minister and give His life a ransom for many and naturally He went wherever they were.

Hospitals, nobody wants to go to a hospital. I don’t like the smell of a hospital. It’s a clean smell but it’s suggestive of pains and nausea and troubles. And I don’t like jails, but I’m sure the Lord Jesus Christ mingled there. I’m sure He’s there. A lot of people don’t hear that he’s there. But this fellow heard this, Junior here, this Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus. He heard about it. And he heard the Jesus of Nazareth passed by.

I wondered what the history of the world would have been like if nobody had ever heard that Jesus was passing by at all? I’ve never heard if Washington hadn’t heard and Lincoln hadn’t heard and Franklin hadn’t heard, although Franklin never became a Christian. He was yet very far over on the side of God, because he’d heard that Jesus Christ passed by. Emerson never was a Christian, in the sense of being a born-again Christian. But somebody had said that if Emerson went to hell, the migration was set in that direction. He was such a wonderful man because he’d had all the influence of Jesus who passed by.

And so, we have Jesus of Nazareth. Up in heaven, I’m sure somebody’s going to compose a song if they haven’t done it already. And I’m sure that among the ransomed up there, the name Jesus of Nazareth is going to be the theme of some great, great oratorial–Jesus of Nazareth. And this man heard about it, and so he began to cry out. He began to cry out and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.

Now, here was a blind man and yet he was crying for mercy. He had theological and spiritual insight enough to know that no matter what he wanted from God, it had to come by mercy. David said, have mercy upon me, O Lord, and hear my prayer. Why did he say, have mercy upon me and hear my prayer? My brother, it’s the mercy of God that every inclines His ear unto you. You’ve never earned it. And even as a Christian, if you are a Christian, even as a Christian, you have not lived so as to put God under obligation to hear you. If God hears you at all, it will be because He’s a merciful God.

My old friend Tom Hare said, I don’t believe in merit praying. I don’t believe that anything comes because we have meritorious prayer. And he said, I don’t believe in meritorious faith. He said, everything flows out of the goodness of God. And if we would see that our prayers would be stepped up in quality and quantity vary greatly, if we would only realize that everything flows out of the goodness of God. You don’t have too beg a fountain to flow. The fountain flows because it wants to flow, and God gives because He wants to give an answer because He wants to answer. And it’s all of His mercy that all these things are done. Jesus of Nazareth had come, and He cried, Son of David, have mercy on me.

And here was a poor blind man trying to get delivered. A poor blind man wanting help from God and not knowing how. He had never seen a sunset. He had heard the song of a bird and only had to imagine what it looked like. He’d heard the voices of his friends and had to imagine what they looked like. His was a world of the imagination, and he had never seen the sun rise nor go down. He’d never seen the waves lap and play on the lake or flow on the Jordan. He had never seen anything, and he was blind. He knew that he didn’t have anything to offer God and he didn’t come and whimper to God and complain. And he didn’t come and say, Lord, why did you treat me like this? And he didn’t come and say, Lord, I’m not such a bad fellow.

You know, lots of people go to hell because they say they’re not so bad. They’re not so bad. And if anybody starts to pray and make a sinner out of them, they bristle up and their hackles rise up their back. And they say, now, wait a minute here. Don’t condemn me. I’m not a bum. No, but here was a man who wasn’t a bum either, but when he came to God, he said, have mercy upon me, O God, have mercy upon me. He asked the Lord’s mercy. He didn’t bring a thing.

The Lord had received you if you come bringing nothing. You go and pick up some scraps and try to bring God a present, the Lord will rejected you just as He rejected Cain. He received an Abel because Abel brought a lamb, but the Lamb has been brought once for all and you don’t have to even bring a lamb. You only come because the Lamb was there. He died and rose and lives again.

Well, notice again now that many charged him that he should hold his peace and I’ve wondered about this. Here was a poor blind fellow. He wanted to see more than he wanted anything else in the wide world just then. And here was Jesus surrounded by elders and deacons, potential elders and deacons and secretaries and big shots and people that more or less fronted for Him, self-appointed fellows, officious Peter, and officious John. They were fronting for the Lord, you know, like a small-town policeman when the big, important person arrives. And they were running ahead for Jesus.

And here through all the noise and the excitement, there went the high, thin voice of a blind man, Son of David, have mercy on me. And of course, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t the way it said in the books of discipline. And it wasn’t the way our dear beloved Brother so and so used to do it. And so they said, hush, hush, hush, and Peter ran over and they ran over and said, quiet there boy, quiet there down, down, don’t you know Who this is? Now, why is it that society will stand by and let you go to hell and oppose you as soon as you start to cry out, God have mercy on me. I want to ask you why that is? Anybody here knows that.

A family rearing a young fellow, they let him go out and play pool and never put a block in his way. They let him go out and bowl and run around nights and come in three in the morning and never say no. And they let him go down and stand on the corner and smoke and run with a gang he shouldn’t run with and never say no.

But if it gets converted from listening to the Salvation Army and comes home with a New Testament and says I’ve been saved, they look at each other shake their heads and say, what’s happened to our boy? I know because that happened in my house. My dear old Presbyterian Mother, God bless her memory. She’s in heaven now. She got converted later. But she was horrified beyond all measure when I started seek God and testify on the street and preach the gospel.

And here we have it. He was lying there. He’s lying there blind. They never looked in his direction, never once looked in his direction. There he was blind, and nobody said, poor, blind fellow. Peter didn’t say to John, isn’t that too bad, that fine looking boy there blind. Not a one of them, not one of them. And nobody cared that he was blind. Nobody cared that he was blind. They only cared when he started to ask God to deliver him from his blindness. Nobody cares that a man sins provided he doesn’t sin by taking something away from them, or endangering them. But as soon as he starts to talk about mercy and grace in the blood of the Lamb, everybody raises his eyebrows and says, something wrong there. What’s the matter? Let him alone. Let Jesus alone.

Jesus didn’t come into the world to be let alone. He came into the world to be surrounded by blind men, and touched by blind men. And touched by women with issues of blood. He came into the world to touch the dead and make them live and touch the deaf and make them hear. That’s what He came into the world for. He’s not as touchy as church deacons, Brother, and he’s not as hard to get to as pastors are. He came in to the world; He was here. The Son of man, He didn’t come to be ministered unto. He came to minister and to give His life a ransom for many.

Well, there we have the picture. Many charging that he should hold his peace. And you know, that’s the end of it for some people. They hear a gospel sermon. They hear something on the radio. They read a tract, or they hear the testimony of a friend and they get concerned. They go home and mention it to their parents, or a man hears it mentioned to to his wife, or a wife hears it mentioned that to her husband, or a brother mentions it to his sister, a sister to her brother and a frozen countenance results. And immediately they draw in and say, well, I’m not going to cause trouble in my home. That’s the end. That’s the last you hear of him, but little old Junior, thank God, you couldn’t stop him. Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, named after his dad. You couldn’t stop him. So, it says here and I’m glad this is here.

I think God had a smile on his face when he told Mark to write this. But Bartimaeus cried the more, a great deal. All you had to do to get him to yell louder than ever was try to silence him. All he knew was nobody had been interested in him before. But now that he was asking for help from God, everybody suddenly got interested.

They say if you give the devil enough rope, he’ll hang himself and he sure hung and swung high and dry with Bartimaeus because it was the devil that inspired these poor, misguided people to try to silence this man, and he cried out the great deal the more, Son of David have mercy on me. And works like that with some people, oppose him and you’ve helped them very greatly. They thrive on opposition, Bartimaeus did. So, when they said, shush, be quiet Bartimaeus, don’t bother this great man. He said, if he’s a great man that’s just why I ought to bother him, and he shouted the louder.

What about you, Sir? Ah, you will live in a home where there’s not much religion and what it is, it’s very formal and seasonal and very proper. But you know, you’re blind and you need the mercy of God. You know there are vistas of truth you have not seen. You know your sins are still on you as a great burden. You know you’re still carrying the weight of woe of a ancestral grief upon your heart down the centuries that has come rolling like a great juggernaut, rolling down the years, crushing generation after generation. And you felt the squeeze and pressure of it, enough to kill you.

And you would like to know for yourself that God saved you; you’d like to have help from the Lord yourself. And you start to cry out, O God, please. Is there a God somewhere? If there is, maybe is that what I heard on the air there from Moodys, WMBI, about the Lord coming to save people; that book I read, that tract I picked up, that testimony from that fellow where I work. Lord, is this true? Then immediately your friends, so called, are on your neck.

Let me tell you something, Junior, young fellow, let me tell you something. Anybody that gets in your way and stands between you and Jesus Christ, isn’t your friend. Do you hear me? She, He isn’t your friend. You say, but she’s pretty. So was Eve. Did you ever think what a beautiful woman Eve was? Fresh from the hand of God and God never made an ugly thing. She must have been a wonderful looking lady. Grandma Eve, must have been beautiful when she stood up and shook her long hair, looked up at the sun in the first brightness of her lovely, female beauty. She was pretty too, but she wrecked Adam, and the big stoop was weak enough to let her do it. Weak enough to let a pretty wife ruin him. All he had to say was, woman, get away with that.

Job later had more sense that Adam had. When Job’s wife tried to get him to curse God and die, he said, you speak like a fool woman. Why should I curse God? God’s been good to me and all I have or got from God, I came into the world naked, and I will go out naked and blessed be the name of the Lord. And she walked off and left him and that’s the last she appears in the picture. All Adam would have had to do would be to assert his manhood and the Fall wouldn’t have taken place. But she was pretty and that pretty thing stands between you and Jesus Christ is one of your worst enemies.

You say, I’m a woman. I’m a girl. Oh, how I thrill and get duck bumps on my forearms when I look at him, handsome, tall, wonderful, deep bass voice, wonderful. But if he’s standing between you and Jesus Christ. Woman, he’s not your friend. He’s your enemy. Don’t call him boyfriend anymore. Call him by his right name. He’s your enemy. And everybody that gets in the way of a blind man and a Savior, is an enemy of the blind man. But Jesus stood still, and he commanded him and called, they call the blind man, commanded him to be called, and they called the blind man and then everybody got over on the other side.

Peter ran and said, all right, come on, come on. He wanted to be in it, you know, and said get up. He comes. Come on. Be of good comfort. He’s calling thee, and he jumped up, cast away His garments, symbolic, maybe of the robe of filthy rags that all sinners wear by nature, and he came to Jesus. You notice he didn’t enter Bible school. You notice that he didn’t join the church. You notice that he didn’t study theology. I think it only took three words to say it, and yet it was all he needed at the moment. He came to Jesus.

And Jesus answered and said unto him, what did Jesus answer there? He answered that prayer. He answered that cry. Well, He said, Bartimaeus, what do you want? He didn’t just want a vague prayer. Bless the missionary’s father and remember all the interest in our prayers, none of that vague woozy praying. He said, what do you want Bartimaeus? And Bartimaeus prayed about the only thing he knew about. He said, Lord, I’ve been blind and I’m sick of not seeing, that I might receive my sight.

Now, there might have been things Bartimaeus wanted or needed worse, but he didn’t know it. And the Lord took him where He found him. So, he said, I want to receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way, thy faith has made thee whole.

Now, here was a transaction; it would have taken three tons of printed matter and three or four advance man and newspaper advertisements and radio announcements and four or five typewriters and three or four mimeograph machines and three or four sounds scribers to get that fellow converted. But Jesus just did with the simplest, most effortless way in the wide world. Here was the perfect setup. God couldn’t have done any better. Here was a sinner and the Savior. One came to the other and that was that. It didn’t cost anybody. He had died. No offering had to be taken. Nobody had to get up and say, dear friends, it’s very expensive. This is very expensive,

There used to be a preacher where I was preaching. He’d get up every night and told the audience, he said, advertising, et cetera, and I always felt, I was young, and he was old, so I didn’t, but I always felt like saying, Brother Patterson, why do you use so much et cetera around here if it’s such expensive stuff? But he was always taking an offering to make up for the et cetera. Well, pay for the stuff. Jesus didn’t have any, you notice. He didn’t have any et cetera here at all. Just a blind man and a Savior, a sinner and the Man who’d come to save him; a dying man and the Man who’d come to die, to give him life, that’s all there was to it, and you know, that’s all there is to it here tonight. That’s how simple it is. No handsome fellow to beg like a salesman. We don’t need that. We don’t need it, the Holy Ghost is here. Jesus came, this Jesus of Nazareth is passing by and here He is. And He’s listening in. His ear is all cocked ready to hear that voice, have mercy on me.

He won’t ask your theology. He won’t say, are you an Arminian, or do you favor the Calvinistic way. He won’t ask that. I don’t think God ever took those two words into his mouth. I think He would scorn to take them in his mouth. He just wants to know, are you blind and is there something in your heart that wants to see so that you can taste it? Well, that’s all you need, Sir. That’s all you need. You’re a sinner. You’re bound by habit. You’re beaten and cuffed and kicked around by iniquity. And Somebody’s here Who came for that very, very thing to help you. And all He has to know is what you want. A lot of vague praying won’t help you a bit. Get down on your knees and go launch into long prayer you heard a Baptist Deacon years ago deliver. That won’t help be a bit.

What do you want? Well, Lord God, I want to be delivered from drink. Lord God, I want to be delivered from habits. Lord, I want to be delivered from sin. Lord, I want to be saved. That’s all you have to say. Just say. Jesus said unto him, go thy way. Thy faith has made them whole. And immediately, immediately one of Mark’s favorite words, immediately he received his sight.

And then, do you know what followed? Do you know what happened? He followed Jesus in the way. He did it. It was a perfectly natural thing to do, that if you were blind a lifetime and somebody came along and met all your hopes and gave you eyesight and you had known after a life of blindness and nobody caring and you begging on, sitting on a mat begging and you know you had no friends, where would you go? Who would you go to? Wouldn’t it be perfectly natural to identify yourself with the one that had set you free and given you sight? Sure, it would.

There’s the psychology of Christian discipleship. We find we got no friends. I know better than that kind of English, but it just came out. We have no friends. There just aren’t any. Brother, there’s One. And when He sets you free, it’s perfectly natural to identify yourself with Him. Well, there’s one Friend. So, the Scripture says, he followed Jesus in the way.

So, I’m going to close my Bible and ask you to look at that pretty picture. Jesus walking down the street, and his puzzled disciples, off a bit from Him. And right behind Him as close as he could get, a blind man. The handsomest, most attractive and most beautiful thing he ever saw was Jesus’ back. He didn’t look up and see the blue sky and write a sonnet. He didn’t gaze at the mountains there in the distance. He looked at the back of the One he loved. Just the profile of Jesus, as he walked away was more wonderful to him than all the cedars of Lebanon, or the flowing waters of the Jordan. Nothing, nothing was as dear as Jesus. Why? Because he had been blind, and Jesus had made him see. That’s the simplicity of it.

Isn’t it a shame we get so involved and complicated and all complex and mixed up? When the simplest thing in the wide world is, I am a blind sinner in need of mercy, and Jesus Christ is a Savior come to give me that mercy, and we meet. And I follow Him because He’s delivered me. The old bishop said, as I get older, my theology gets simpler. It’s this. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. That’s all. Will you bow your heads with me.

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“Repentance“

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“Repentance”

January 4, 1959

Now, I want to talk today, this morning before the communion, on the 51st Psalm. We read it previously, perhaps a few of you came in late for it, very few. But it’s the 51st Psalm, and David that starts out, to have mercy upon me O God according to Thy lovingkindness and according unto the multitude of a tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

Now, we come to the communion service, the first communion service of the New Year. And of course, we entered the new year. It’s 1959, the first Sunday of the new year. And there are some things we want from God and we want them legitimately. They are not the whimpering of spoiled children. They are the legitimate and appropriate desires of mature Christians. I’ll name about five or six things that we want. We want protection during this coming year. You and I can no more dare face the year without the protection of God than we dare face a thunderstorm or a blizzard without shelter.

Then we want guidance during this coming year. Every one of us will want guidance. We want personal guidance and we want providential guidance, because you will be sought, and your exploitation will be attempted by 10,000 persons who want to make something of you. You will be asked here and there, you will be. Suggestions will be offered to you by the scores, and you want guidance. And you have a right to want prosperity. Not financial prosperity necessarily, though that is not even wrong to desire that we might prosper financially.

Then we hope you will want growth. We hope you will want to fulfill the Scripture that says, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we hope you’ll want to make spiritual progress and advance in holiness. If you do, I believe you’re in the will of God. If you do not, then I’m afraid you have wasted the last year, because last year should have made us desirous of having spiritual progress the next year. And then this year we’re now in should prepare us to want more spiritual progress in the years that may lie ahead. And if we do not I say, if we are languid and perfunctory about all this, if even one of us, even one of us, it’s all then, we have wasted last year to a large degree. We have lived like a turtle or some other animal that barely vegetated. We have spiritually, merely vegetated, merely stayed alive.

Then, if this is true, and I think it is true that we do want during this time, a protection and guidance and prosperity and growth in grace and spirit to make spiritual progress and to advance in holiness and likeness to God, then one quality must be present to assure these benefits. And that one quality is true repentance, contrition. I wonder why we can’t see this, that repentance is not something you do and get over with. Repentance is something you feel. It is a state. It is contrition. And contrition is not something you feel and then get over with as you might take a shot of penicillin soon, to cure, to kill the bugs inside your blood and heal you have, a disease and then forget it. We cannot thus think of contrition. Contrition is rather a permanent state of mind. Flaring up or dying down as a fire might a little as we go along, but always present. The glow of it ought to be in our hearts always and it must be.

The 51st Psalm is a classic example of contrition. It had a historic reason for it. But it created a mood in which David lived. And we do well to let this Psalm create a mood for us. And to try to keep that mood, it’s far better than to try to seek comfort this coming year. If you will have decided, or secretly even decided that you’re going to enjoy yourself more this year, that you’re hoping to have more comforts, more conveniences and a better state of affairs, so you’ll comfort yourself and live better, then you haven’t properly, you haven’t learned Christ yet, as you should.

Now to enjoy ourselves, that’s the counsel of unbelief, to desire to do better, feel better, to be more consoled and to rest more and relax more and work less and have more of the comforts which we tell ourselves we have well, well earned. All right, if that’s your plan for the coming year, then that’s the counsel of unbelief. That’s, that’s what the rich man wanted. That’s what Demus was wanted. But that isn’t what the children of God ought to want. We ought to want guidance and protection and spiritual growth and advance in holiness whether we’re comforted or not. I don’t care whether I feel good this year or not. You know, you can get so busy with God, you don’t notice whether you’re feeling good or not. And if somebody asks you, how do you feel, you have to stop and ask and consult yourself to see if it’s worth the problem?

Well, this contrition is found here in Psalm 51. There are two things I want you to notice about it. One of them is that the writer says no good thing of himself. And he says only good of God. For after all, there are only two persons here. There was a lot of sin and a lot of involvement. David was involved with various persons and he’d sinned against a lot of people, against his country and against the people that trusted him. He had sinned a lot. There was a lot of involvement. But when David began to pray, he recognized that all that involvement was secondary. The Primary Person is present here too, then, David, he saw that there were just two persons here. I against Thee, Thee only have I sinned. Against Thee and I. That’s all David talked about.

Now, he said nothing good about himself. He offered no excuses. And he offered no defense. I believe this is greatly pleasing to God, to come to God without excuse, and without defense, I believe greatly pleases God. For God is pleased with some things and displeased with others that we do. And I believe the heart that comes to God without defense and without excuse, greatly pleases God. A woman who came to Jesus and asked him to do certain things for her. He looked at her in amazement and said, why, surely woman, great is thy faith. He was pleased with the woman. With others, He was displeased and said, oh ye of little faith. I think it’s pleasing to God to come to Him without excuse, without defense.

Then, he says only good of God. He doesn’t come to God whimpering or complaining or finding fault. He throws himself on God’s mercy. And I believe that’s the safest place in the universe, throw himself, throw ourselves on the mercy of God. From every stormy wind that blows, says Stowell’s song, from every stormy wind that blows, from every swelling tide of woes, there is a calm, a sure treat: Tis found beneath the mercy seat.

Now, the mercy seat is not a poetic hiding place. The mercy seat has a sharp theological meaning. It is, it is the cross, it is the mercy seat where Christ sits. It means to throw ourselves on the mercy of God without excuse and without personal buildup and without defense, and without any whimpering or complaining against the treatment God has given us; to come to Him thanking Him for every good thing and admitting frankly we deserved every bad one and throw ourselves on the mercy of Gods.

You know, the problem with us is, and the reason that our good resolves don’t last, it is a joke. It’s a cartoonist joke it. It is the joke of the comedian and the funny paper and all the rest that we make a resolution and break it. But the reason Christians make these resolutions and break them, whether it’s at New Year or whether it’s sometime in the middle of the year at some convention or revival meeting, is inadequate repentance. Inadequate repentance, that’s our trouble. To have sinned or be practicing sin and to know it and yet to be unable to feel sorry about it. I tell you, that’s worse than cancer. That’s worse than multiple sclerosis. Those things are physical, and they can even be healed, but you can’t heal this.

To sin, to practice sin, to be living with sin on you and to know it, and you to be unable to feel sorry about it. And, in order to feel sorry and be too weak to amend, that’s, that’s inadequate repentance. And inadequate repentance always is a sandy foundation. And all of your good intentions will fall apart and you will not make any progress if there is inadequate repentance there. I say, to feel sorry for our sins and yet not to be able to make any changes, or to know we have sinned and yet not even to feel sorry, this is greatly to aggravate our evil and compound the felony. And then to admire ourselves and to defend ourselves, it’s to deepen the intensity of sin and make it grave and critical. And I believe it’s greatly to displease God.

And then while trying to repent, secretly to desire to continue in the thing we’re trying to repent of. What inconsistency is this, what incongruous praying, what hypocrisy; that we’re trying to repent and secretly intending not to repent at all, but to go back and do the same thing over again. And to be so little concerned even while we’re repenting that we break off without concerned to eat or to sleep or to chat or to seek entertainment.

You know, Israel in the olden days when they were repenting, they put on sackcloth and ashes. Do you know what sackcloth is? It’s a gunny sack we call it now. It’s about as coarse a cloth as there is. Nobody would want to wear it. And if you wore it next to yourself, you’d be scratching continually and suffering after a while with a rash. And ashes, what about ashes? Nobody can say a good word for ashes. I can’t think of a good word to be said for ashes.

And Israel put on sackcloth and threw ashes on their heads, up into their hair, down their necks and down over their bodies. Why did they do that? Was there some sanctifying virtue in the sackcloth? No, they didn’t think that and you don’t think that. Nobody does. Did ashes have anything in it, ashes. No, ashes have nothing. There’s nothing in ashes or sackcloth. But what they meant was, O God, we have sinned and we mean to repent and we’re trying to repent and we want to repent and we’re willing to even lay aside even the common and legitimate pleasures. Even the legitimate pleasures, we relinquish them in order that you might know that we mean what we say. Instead of breaking off to eat or sleep or look at a TV program, why, they put sackcloth and sat and threw ashes on their heads. It looked silly, and it did not have any Biblical commandment. There was nothing in the law of Moses that they were to do it so far as I know. But they did it because they wanted themselves to know and they wanted God to know that their repentance was going to be adequate. They were ready to give up the legitimate things in order that they might make their repentance effective.

Now what is the uses, or are the uses of sorrow in repentance? For the Bible talks about sorrow and repentance. But I believe that sorrow chastens the soul. To sin and to get off easy and sin again and get off easy and to sin again and get off easy and continue, pretty soon you’ll get a habit. You get a habit of it, to sin, commit the sin of omission. Any sin of omission and to get off easy, and then to commit it again and continue to commit it, pretty soon we’ve established tracks for our hearts to run on.

And because sin didn’t cost us anything, but we cheerfully said, well, Jesus paid it all. He’s forgiven me and it cost us nothing, we don’t know how bad it is. We don’t sense it. And so, sorrow is the chastening of the soul. Sorrow is the sackcloth. A man who had worn sackcloth for two or three days, he didn’t forget it. And he hesitated twice before he went back to do that thing again, for he remembered the rash and the itching and sleepless nights and the sneezing from the ashes and the dust and gritty ashes in his hair, he remembers that. He punished himself a little.

Now, I know self-punishment does not atone for sin, but it does serve to make a man sick of it. And that’s why Paul said there was a sorrow not to be repented of. He that sorrows unto repentance, sorrows with a sorrow not to be repented of. Nobody ever repented of having repented. Nobody ever did yet repent of having repented. And the chasing of the soul by the Holy Ghost in the sorrow of contrition, helps to cure us so we don’t want to do this thing again. It’s a kind of therapy, a cure, a psychological cure, to make us sick of the condition that we’d gotten ourselves into. I believe that we would do well my serious-minded friends. I believe we would do well wo enter this, vibrant, living, dangerous new year, this threatening, louring new year, to enter it in a state of contrition.

But I would close by asking you to beware of contrition without hope. Because contrition without hope becomes remorse, and remorse is sick repentance. Judas did not repent. But Judas felt remorse. The repentance of the man Judas was a sick repentance and the result was he simply tormented himself to death, went out and committed suicide and knew the foretaste of hell before they went there. That’s sick repentance, which is contrition without hope, I want to warn you against it. I want to warn you of the frivolity, the spiritual frivolity which allows you to go on and on carelessly on your way without checking on yourself. But I also want to warn you, that if you allow yourself to become so serious and so heavy hearted, that there’s no hope in it. Then your repentance is a sick repentance. It’s self torment and it’s not the repentance of faith.

True Repentance is three things. Let me give them to you and then we’ll close. True repentance is a realistic self judgment, a realistic self judgment. I do not believe God is pleased to have me say worse things about myself and it is true, if indeed I could imagine anything worse than is true. I don’t believe it pleases God. I have heard and I’ve smiled, I’ve heard young girls, say 14-15 years old, stand and testify, very emotionally moved and eloquently tell what vile wretches, what terribly depraved, deeply sinful and abandoned creatures they have been. And I smiled to myself and said, God bless the little honey. I suppose the worst thing she ever did in her life was slap her little sister or drink Coca Cola. But, you know, she was calling herself names, abusing herself because that was the proper thing to do you know, where she came from. That was the proper thing to do. Never, never lie about yourself, not even not even to please what you think is pleasing God. Be realistic in your self judgement. David said, let everyone, not David but Paul said, let every man think soberly of himself. Not more highly than they ought to, but soberly.

So, judge yourself. That’s the word, judge yourself. Judgment isn’t a 100% condemnation. Judgment is an appraisal of the depths of the guilt and the handing out of punishment in keeping with the degree of guilt. If it’s only secondary murder, then they’re not going to hang a man. They’re going to give judgment according to the depths and degree and intensity of the sin. And so, we must be realistic about this thing. And then, when we’ve been judged ourselves realistically, we must make full determination to change, any sweet talk before God about how bad we are that isn’t accompanied by a quiet determination to change, is not repentance at all, but nothing else.

Then there should be a third thing and that is a cheerful confidence in Christ. Ah, the devil must grind his ugly teeth together when he sees a Christian so penitential that he’s tremblingly before his God and pleading for mercy, and yet sees a smile on his face at the same time. Because the smile is there, out of cheerful confidence in Jesus Christ the Lord. The same day that he wrote Psalm 51 he also wrote Psalm 103. And these are the words of Psalm 103. No remorse here. No sick penitence here, but wholesome sound repentance followed by cheerful hope and good expectation of God’s forgiveness. The Lord is merciful, said this same David, and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide, nag. Have you had friends about you, husband or wife or anybody, father, mother that would just nag continually? Your faults were a subject of continual nagging. God will not nag. He will not always chide. Neither will He keep His anger forever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him. And as far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.

When I first came to the city of Chicago, there was a great pulpit orator in this city by the name of Dr. Frederick Shannon. Maybe somebody would remember him. Dr. Frederick Shannon. He preached somewhere in one of the downtown churches. I used to hear him occasionally on the radio. He was one of the old-fashioned orators, an Irish orator. He would talk about the robin as the bird with the sun down on his breasts, I remember hearing him. And he said that once he was preaching in his church and there was a great retired professor of mathematics sitting down near the front. And he was preaching from the text, as far as the east is from the west so hath He removed our transgressions from us.

And he spoke out and said, Dr. So and So, how far is the east from the west? And he said, instinctively, the old man reached in his pocket, pulled out a pad and a pencil. Then he stopped, and put them in back and looked up at the preacher and grinned. You can’t figure that Brother. How far is the east from West? Nobody knows. Not all the mathematicians in the world can tell you that. And that’s how far God takes sin away. For like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him. For He knoweth our frame. He remembers that we are dust. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children’s children. Bless the Lord ye His angels, blessing in all places of His dominion.

Let us enter the new year in a state of cheerful contrition. Before God, contrite always. But also, cheerfully hopeful that our God is forgiving, kind and loving and tender. He’ll never deal with us as we deserve, but deal with us out of His own heart. That’s my hope for this year, that I’ll be dealt with out of God’s heart. God will never look down and say let’s look Tozer over, so we’ll decide this year what to give him. Uh-uh! If He did, oh, I’d be remorseful to the place of sick, pathological penitence, but would never have hope. But He will look in His own heart and say, out of my heart, I decide how good I’m going to be to him.

So, that is our hope friends this year. God will treat you the way God is, not the way you are, provided of course that you have done as I’ve suggested here, that you have realistically judged yourself and determinedly changed to please the will of God and then cheerfully hope. I believe that God will keep us during this year, and that we shall grow in grace. We’ll have His protection and His kind watchfulness in all the days ahead.

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“The Mercy of God”

Sunday evening, October 19, 1958

Message #5 of #10 in Attributes of God Series

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide neither will he keep His anger forever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. Whereas the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him for He knoweth our frame. He remembereth that we are dust. The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him and His righteousness unto children’s children, Psalms 103. Then, in 2 Corinthians, Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort. James 5, ye have heard of the patience of Job and have seen the end of the Lord that the Lord is very pitiful in His tender mercies. 2 Peter 3, The Lord is not slack concerning His promises as some men count slackness, but is long suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Now, mercy then is an attribute of God. In the Old Testament, there is a very wonderfully moving declaration of this in Exodus and in 2 Chronicles that one attribute of God is mercy. Moses you remember was up there hiding, and the Lord Jehovah descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of Jehovah. And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. Then, in 2 Chronicles, in the temple it came to pass as the trumpeters and singers were as one; to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord. When they lifted up their voices with the trumpet and cymbals and instruments of music and praised Jehovah saying, for He is good for His mercy endureth forever. It came to pass then as they did that, that the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the Lord so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud for the glory of the Lord had filled the house.

Now we had in those two passages, a setting forth in rather formal style, the declaration that God is merciful. And I should like to say as I have said about the other attributes of the Deity, that mercy is not something God has, but something God is. If mercy was something God had, conceivably God might mislay it, or He might use it up. It might become less or more, but since it is something that God is, then we must remember that it is uncreated. The mercy of God did not come into being. The mercy of God always was in being for mercy is what God is, and God is eternal, and God is infinite.

Now, here’s something that you probably won’t believe until you have checked it, because all our teaching has been on the other side on this. It’s been careless. Nobody has come out and said it, but we’ve gathered it. At least I have, that the Old Testament is a book of severity and law, and the New Testament is a book of tenderness and grace. But my brother, do you know that while both the Old Testament and the New Testament declare the mercy of God, the Old Testament says more than four times as much about mercy as the New? That’s a little bit hard to believe, but it’s true. It can be checked. Anybody who has the proper source books can find out that that is true, that the words mercy and merciful and mercies over four times as often in the Old Testament as they do in the New. So that’s an error about the severe Old Testament and the kind New Testament. It’s a great error, because the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New is one God. He did not change. He is the same God, and being the same God and not changing, He must therefore necessarily be the same in the Old as He is in the New and the same in the New as He is in the Old. Because He is immutable, He doesn’t change. And because He is perfect, He cannot add so that God’s mercy was just as great in the Old Testament as it was and is in the New.

Now a goodness is the source of mercy. And right here, I must apologize for my necessity to use human language to speak of God. You see, language deals with those things that are finite and God is infinite. And when we try to describe God or to talk about God, we’re always breaking our own rules and falling back into the little semantic snares which we don’t want to fall into, but can’t help it.

You see, when I say that one attribute is the source of another, I’m not using the correct language, but I’m putting it so we can get hold of it. If I tried to talk in absolutes, you’d all fall sound asleep. And I couldn’t do it to begin with and wouldn’t do it if I could, because you would all fall sound asleep. But let me say and say it with the understanding that I am talking down to myself, that goodness is the source of mercy. I preached on the goodness of God here two, three or four weeks ago, and God’s infinite goodness is taught throughout the entire Bible. That God, the goodness is that in God which desires the happiness of His creatures. And it is that irresistible, urging God, that urge to bestow blessedness, and that this goodness of God takes pleasure in the pleasure of His people.

I wish I could teach the children of God to know this. We have had this drummed into us so long that we believe that if we’re happy, God is scared and frightened about us, and that He’s never quite pleased if we’re happy. But the true teaching of the word is that God takes pleasure in the pleasure of His people, provided His people take pleasure in God, and that God suffers along with His friends.

Now over here in Isaiah, I will mention the loving kindness of the Lord and the praises of the Lord. That’s Jehovah according to all that the Lord has bestowed on us, and the great goodness toward the house of Israel, which He hath bestowed on them according to His mercies and according to the multitude of His loving kindness. For He said, surely, they are my people. Surely, they’re my people, children that will not lie. So, He was their Savior. In all their affliction, He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them. In His love and His pity, He redeemed them and bear them and carried them all the days of old.

God takes pleasure in the pleasure of His friends and He suffers along with His friends; and He takes no pleasure in the suffering of His enemies. Read this, it says, as I live saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their way and live. The Book of Lamentations tells us more fully than that, that God is not pleased when people suffer. God never looks down and rejoices to see somebody squirm. If God has to punish, God is not pleased with Himself for punishing. I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked saith God.

Now, according to the Old Testament, mercy has certain meanings. It means to stoop in kindness to an inferior, and it means to have pity upon, and it means to be actively compassionate. There used to be a verb that springs out of the word compassion. We don’t use it anymore. Maybe it’s because we don’t have the concept anymore. I think the reason that some words fall into disuse is that the concept they cover falls into disuse. And it is the word compassionate. It is a verb that God actively compassionates suffering men. I like that very, very wonderfully well, actively compassionates. That is that God has compassion. But you know, for God to feel compassion at a distance would be one thing, but for God actively to compassionate people, would be something else.

Let me read again from the Word of God about it here. It says, and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage. And they cried and their cry came up unto God by reason of their bondage. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant. And God looked upon the children of Israel and God had respect unto them. Now that’s the close of the second chapter of Exodus. And the third chapter opens with the burning bush and goes on to the commissioning of Moses to go deliver Israel from Egypt. So, this active compassionate is when God actively compassionates people, He did four things. He heard their groanings, He remembered His covenant, He looked upon their sufferings, and He pitied them. And immediately He came down to help them.

The same thing is true in the New Testament where it is said of our Lord Jesus, that when He saw the multitude that they were a sheep having no Shepherd, He was moved with compassion and said unto the disciples, give ye them unto eat. That is to actively compassionate.

A great many people are very merciful in their beds, very merciful and in their lovely living rooms, very merciful in their 1959 cars, but they never, they have compassion, but they never compassionate. They read something in the newspaper for the moment now that we’re talking about. They read something in the newspaper about somebody that suffering and say, oh, isn’t that terrible, that poor family was burned out, and they’re out on the street with no place to go, and they turn the radio on and they listen to some program. They’re very compassionate for a minute and a half, but they don’t compassionate. That is, they don’t do anything about it. But God’s compassion leads Him to actively compassionate. He did it by sending Moses down to deliver the children of Israel.

Now, I’d like to give you some facts about the mercy of God. And I want you to get a hold of this, and even if it does sound dry to you tonight, I promise you that if you’ll get a hold of it, it will be worth gold and silver and precious jewels to you in the days to come. Here are some facts about the mercy of God. One is that it never began to be. The mercy of God never began to be. I have heard of men who are hard-hearted or careless and then they began to get stirred up, and their mercies began to blossom forth.

Well, it never was so of God. God never lay in lethargy without His compassion, because God, mercy is simply what God is. And it is uncreated and eternal as I have said, it never began to be. It always was. When heaven and earth were yet unmade and the stars were yet unformed, and all that space men are talking about now was only a thought in the mind of God. God was merciful as He is now. And not only did it never begin to be, but the mercy of God has never been any more than it is now. It has never been more.

There are some things they tell us of swirls out yonder that have burnt themselves out. They tell us that there are heavenly bodies that disappeared in a grand explosion so many light years ago, that it will yet be thousands of Earth years before their light stops shining. The light is still coming, the waves are still coming, though the source of those waves have long ceased to be. And there are stars that burn up bright and dim down low again. But the mercy of God has never been any more than it is now, for the simple reason that the mercy of God is infinite and anything that is infinite can’t be less than it is and it can’t be any more than it is. It’s infinite. That means boundless, unlimited; it has no measurements on any side. Because measurements are created things and God is uncreated. Therefore, the mercy of God has never been any more than now. And the mercy of God will never be any less than now.

Don’t imagine that when the Day of Judgment comes, in which is firmly believed, don’t think for a minute that God will turn off His mercy, as the sun goes behind the cloud as you turn off the spigot. Don’t think for a minute that the mercy of God will cease to be. The mercy of God will never be any less than it is now, because the Infinite cannot cease to be infinite. And the perfect cannot admit an imperfection. And again, nothing that occurs can increase the mercy of God or diminish the mercy of God or alter the quality of the mercy of God.

For instance, the cross of Christ when Jesus died on the cross, the mercy of God did not become any greater. It could not become any greater for it was already infinite. You see, we have the mistaken notion, and this isn’t heresy, it isn’t something somebody goes around teaching, but we just get odd motions. We get the idea that God is showing mercy because Jesus died. No, No Brother! Jesus died because God is showing mercy. When Jesus died, it was the mercy of God that gave us Calvary, not Calvary that gave us mercy. If God had not been merciful, there would have been no incarnation, no babe in the manger, no man on a cross and no open tomb. It was the mercy of God that gave us Calvary, not Calvary that roused the mercy of God.

So, keep that in mind that nothing anybody ever did, ever increased the mercy of God in it. God has mercy enough to unfold the whole universe in His heart. And nothing anybody ever did could diminish the mercy of God. A man can walk out from under and away from the mercy of God as Israel did, and as Adam and Eve did for a time, and as the nations of the world have done, as Sodom and Gomorrah did. We can make the mercy of God inoperative toward us by our conduct since we’re free moral agents. But that doesn’t change the power of the Word of God any, the mercy of God and He doesn’t diminish it in the slightest, and it doesn’t alter the quality of it.

And let me say this, and you may wince under this for a little bit, that the intercession of Christ at the right hand of God does not increase the mercy of God toward His people. For if God were not already merciful, there would be no intercession of Christ at the right hand of God. And if God is merciful at all, and He’s infinitely merciful; and it’s impossible for the mediatorship of Jesus at the right hand of the Father to make the mercy of God any more than it is now. It simply cannot be.

Now, in coming home this afternoon from a meeting, I talked with brother Chase and he reminded me of something. I told him I was going to preach on mercy. So, I’d like to add this little thing to my sermon. I wrote it in here so I wouldn’t forget it. It is that no attribute of God is greater than any other one. You know, we think so. Some would say, oh, the love of God. The man Henry Drummond wrote, what did he call his book? The Greatest Thing in the World? The Greatest Thing in the World. Well, yes, if you need love, love is the greatest thing. If you need mercy, mercy is the greatest thing. Here’s the point. Since all the attributes of God are simply God, then it’s impossible that anything in God can be greater than anything else in God. That’s good theology brothers, metaphysics, but it’s good theology, and you can’t change it. And you can’t argue it down, it’s truth; that the love of God is infinite, and the mercy of God is infinite, and the justice of God is infinite. Therefore, one is not greater than the other, but all are the same. And yet, there are attributes of God that can be needed more at various times.

For instance, when the man went along and saw the fellow that had been beaten up by robbers lying there, the most needed attribute at that moment was mercy. He needed somebody to compassionate him. And so, the Good Samaritan got down off his beast and went over and compassionated. He needed him. That’s what he needed at the time. And that’s why the mercy of God is so wonderful to a sinner who comes home. And he wants to write about it and talk about it forever, because it was what he needed so desperately bad at the moment.

So, we sang as we sang in our opening song tonight, amazing grace, how sweet the sound. And yet the grace of God is not any greater than the justice of God or the holiness of God. But for fellows like you and me, it’s what we need the most desperately at the time. It isn’t God that’s different, it’s us that’s different. You go up to heaven and talk to an angel up there and say to the angel, isn’t the mercy of God wonderful? He’ll know that it is, but he won’t understand it the way we do.

Wise Binney said in his great little hymn that these creatures around the throne, they have never, never known a sinful world like this. So they cannot appreciate the love of God as we can quite, and they can’t appreciate the mercy of God as we can. And they talk about the holiness of God. They talk about the judgment of God and the justice of God. And they sing, true and righteous are thy judgments, because they have never known sin and therefore, they are not in need of the mercy that you and I are.

All God’s attributes are equal, because they are simply what God is, and God is equal to Himself always. But when you’re in a jam, you need certain attributes more than others. When I’m in the doctor’s office, I need pity, you know. I want help. And that’s what I want the most. Now I can look up on the wall and see his diplomas and a lot of things, but I just want it to be nice to me, because I’m always scared when I go to a doctor. And we when we come to God, our need determines which of God’s attributes at the moment we will celebrate. And we’ll have a thousand of them to celebrate.

Now, let’s point out something else: how God’s mercy operates. I said two weeks ago tonight, that the judgment of God is God’s justice confronting moral inequity. That the judgment of God is God’s justice confronting iniquity. When the justice of God confronts moral inequity, which is iniquity, then judgment falls. When justice sees iniquity, judgment falls. So I say tonight, that mercy is God’s goodness confronting human guilt and suffering. When the goodness of God confronts human guilt and suffering, God listens, God hears. And the bleating of the lamb comes into His ear and the moment the babe comes into His heart and the cry of Israel comes up to His throne, the goodness of God is confronting human suffering and guilt. And that is mercy, my brethren, that is mercy.

Now, I like to say that all men are recipients of God’s mercy. Let’s remember that. Don’t think for a minute that when you repented and came back from the swine pen to the Father’s house that then mercy began to operate, no. Mercy had operated there all the time. Listen, it says over here, it is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed because His compassions fail not.

So, remember that, if you hadn’t had the mercy of God all the time, withholding, stooping in pity, withholding judgment, you would have perished long ago. Khrushchev in the Kremlin is recipient of the mercy of God. The triple murderer in Bridewell is the recipient of the mercy of God. And the blackest heart that lies in the lowest wallow in this city tonight is a recipient of the mercy of God. Now, that doesn’t mean they’ll be saved. That doesn’t mean that they’ll be converted and finally reach heaven, but it means that God is holding up His justice, because He’s having mercy. He is waiting because a Savior died.

So, all of us are recipients of the mercy of God. You say, well then, when I come and am forgiven and cleansed and delivered, isn’t that the mercy of God? Sure. That’s the mercy of God to you. But all the time you were sinning against Him, He was having pity on you. For God is not willing that any should perish, and that it says in Roman’s 2, accounts for the long suffering of God, He’s waiting, God would take this world and squeeze it in His hand as a child might squeeze a robin’s egg and destroy it out of mind forever, except that He’s a merciful God and He hears tears and sees tears and hears groans and sees groans, and with all of His intelligence and His love and mercy, He is conscious of our suffering down here.

So, all men are recipients of the mercy of God, but God has postponed the execution. That is all. When the justice of God confronts human guilt, then there is a sentence of death. But the mercy of God, because that also is an attribute of God not contradicting the other, but working with it, postpones the execution.

Now, mercy cannot cancel apart from atonement. When justice sees iniquity, then there must be judgment. But as I said, last two weeks ago, mercy brought Christ to the cross, and I don’t claim to understand that. I am so happy about the things I do know, And so delightedly happy about the things I don’t know. I don’t know what happened there on that cross exactly. I know He died. I know that God the Mighty Maker died for man the creature’s sin. I know that God turned His back on that Holy, Holy, Holy Man. I know that He gave up the ghost and died. I know that in Heaven was registered atonement for all mankind. I know that. And still, I repeat, I don’t know why and I don’t know what happened. I only know that in the infinite goodness of God and His infinite wisdom, He wrought out a plan whereby the Second Person of the Trinity incarnated as a man could die in order that justice might be satisfied while mercy rescued the man for whom He died.

Ah, my brother, that’s Christian theology, that’s Christian theology. Whatever your denomination, that’s what you want to go to heaven on. You can’t go to heaven on spirituals and choruses and cheap books, but you can go to heaven on the mercy of God in Christ, for that’s what the Bible teaches. Justification means that mercy and justice have collaborated. And when God turns and sees iniquity and then the man of iniquity rushes to the cross, He sees no longer iniquity, but He sees justification. And so, we’re justified by faith.

Now, I’d like to clear up something I said over here, and if you’ve been following me real closely, you’ve been believing everything I said without wondering and checking on me, then I am not doing as much good as I want to do. When I said over here that God takes pleasure in the pleasure of His people and suffers along with His friends, and read the Scripture to show you that He suffers along with these friends. If you’re a good, close-type thinker, immediately you followed me and said, how can a perfect God suffer, because suffering means that somewhere there’s a disorder. There must be a disorder somewhere in order that anybody might suffer. You don’t suffer as long as you have a psychological, mental, and physical order. But when you get out of order, then you suffer.

Now again, I’ll tell you this, as long as it’s declared in the Bible, you take it by faith and say, Father, I believe it. And then because you believe, you try to understand, and if you can understand, then thank God and your little intellect can have a little fun leaping about rejoicing in God. But, if you read it in the Bible, and your intellect can’t understand it, then there’s only one thing to do and that is to look up and say, O Lord God Thou knowest.

There’s an awful lot we don’t know. The trouble with us evangelicals is, we know too much, and we’re too slick and we have too many answers. I’m looking for the fellow who will say, I don’t know, and O Lord God, Thou knowest. There’s your man who is spiritually wise. But when we have all the answers and know it, everything will be, what about this suffering of God? How can God suffer? Suffering would seem to indicate some imperfection. And yet we know that God is perfect. Suffering would seem to indicate some loss or lack and yet we know that God can’t suffer no loss and that He cannot lack, because God is intimately perfect in all His being.

So, I do not know how to explain this. I only know that the Bible declares it. That God suffers with His children, and that in all their affliction He was afflicted. And in His love and in His mercy, He carried them and He made their bed in their sickness. I know this, but I don’t know how. And the great old theologian said, don’t reject the fact because you don’t know the method. Don’t say it isn’t so because I don’t know how it’s so. There’s so much you don’t know how it’s so.

If you come to me after service and ask me the how of things, I’ll ask you twenty-five questions one after the other about yourself, about your body, your mind, your hair, your skin, your eye, your ears. You won’t be able to answer one question, yet you use all those aforementioned things even though you don’t understand them. So I don’t know how God can suffer. That is a mystery I may never know. You know, the Scripture says we’re going to know as we’re known, and we’re known perfectly. So, I suppose it means that within certain limits, we’re going to know perfectly and possibly, we will know.

A lot of hymn writers who should have been cutting the grass at the time, have written some songs and one of them ran something about like this. I wonder why, I wonder why He loved me so. I will love Him. When we pray, I might know why He loved me so. Well, my brother, you will never know that. There’s only one answer to why God loves you and that is because God is love. And there’s only one answer to why God has mercy on you, it’s because God is mercy. And that mercy is an attribute of the Deity. Don’t ask God why, but thank Him for the vast wondrous “how” and the fact of the thing.

I think, brother McAfee, that I’m going to paraphrase a little quatrain written by Faber about this of how God can suffer. I think I’m going to read it like this: how Thou can suffer O My God, and be the God Thou art; is darkness to my intellect, but sunshine to my heart. I don’t know how He does it. But I know that when I’m sick, God is sad; and I know that when I’m miserable, God suffers along with me. And I know that in all my sickness, He will make my bed because His name is goodness and His name is mercy.

I want to talk a little bit now in closing about the nearness of God’s mercy. As a father pitieth his children I read, as a father pitieth his children. Way back right after the first World War when Hoover, that is, Herbert Hoover was, I forget what his technical name was. He was administrator of American aid, I think, for the orphans of Europe that had been dislocated and their parents had been killed and their towns broken up by the war. And the United States, with its big heart, our American people, gave vast sums of money and they appointed Herbert Hoover to go over and administer it; handed out to the people rightly. But they didn’t have too much compared with a number of orphans they had.

So, here’s what I heard or read. A newspaper man saw this and wrote about it. He said he was in one of these places where they were handing out dole to the orphans. And he said a man came in, very thin, large supernaturally, or unnaturally bright eyes and thin cheeks and thin arms and leading a little girl. And she also showed signs of malnutrition, eyes too large and bright, her little abdomen distended. And her thin little leg and arms too small, too thin for her age. And this man led her in. And he said to the person in charge, he said, I would like to bring you my little girl and have you take her and put her on your list. And they said, this is your little girl? Yes. Well, they said we’re awfully sorry, but our rule here is that only full orphans can receive any help. If one of the parents is living, then we can’t take responsibility because we just don’t have enough. There are too many full orphans for us to take a half orphan.

He looked down at his little girl and she looked up questioningly with a big bright, two bright eyes. And then he turned and said, well you know, I can’t work. I’m sick. I have been abused. I’ve been in prison. I’ve been half-starved and now I’m ill and I can’t work. I can barely stagger around. But I brought her down for you to take care of her. And they said, well, we’re sorry. Where’s the mother? Well, the mother’s dead. She was killed in the war. Well, we’re sorry, but there’s nothing we can do, only full orphans. He said, you mean that if I were dead, you’d take care of my little girl and you would feed her and she could live and have clothing and a home? They said yes. Then he reached down and pulled her little skinny body up to himself and hugged her hard and kissed her. And then put her hand in the hand of the man at the desk and said, I’ll arrange that. He walked out of the room and committed suicide.

Brethren, I heard that story and I haven’t gotten over it in the last years. The War ended in 1918. That was told in 1918 or early 1919 and still I see that picture. I see the picture of the man who was too sick to work, but who stood in the way of his daughters getting decent food and clothing. He said I’ll take care of that. And he did. That’s mercy as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him. Jesus said, I go out. The Son of Man goes out and He will be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles, and He will be crucified and slain. And Peter said, not so Lord, not so. But Jesus said in effect, here you are, all of you, and if I don’t, you don’t live. So, he went out, not to slay Himself but to put Himself where they could slay Him. Mercy was compassionating in the only way it could at the moment, by dying. So, Christ Jesus, our Lord died there on that cross, for He loved us and pitied us as a father pities his children.

Now there are two things I’d like to say. One of them is that we that have received mercy, must show mercy. And that we must pray that God will help us to show mercy. We have received it; we’ve got to show it. And the second is, that this mercy can only come by atonement, but atonement has been made, that is, it can only operate toward us because of atonement, but atonement has been made.

And now I want to close my little talk with a reading and a little of commenting on a hymn I have here. I’ve never heard it sung and I don’t know that it’s being sung these days. But here’s the way it goes. It is evidently a hymn written around the book of Hebrews or parts of the book of Hebrews. It says, where high the heavenly temple stands, the house of God not made with hands; a great High Priest, our nature wears, the Guardian of mankind appears.

There we have it, my friend. I don’t want to introduce anything unpleasant, but I said to someone today, if the church rests upon the Pope, then the church has no foundation now and won’t have for eighteen or more days. And if priests are as necessary then, I don’t see it. Because I learned that where high the heavenly temple stands, the house of God not made with hands, a Great High Priest our nature wears, the Guardian of mankind appears; they will now ascended it up on high, He bends on Earth, a brother’s eye; partaker of the human name, He knows the frailty of our frame. Our fellow Sufferer now retains, a Fellow feeling of our pain, and still remembers in the skies, His tears, His agonies and cries. In every pang that rends the heart, the Man of Sorrows has a part. He sympathizes with our grief until the Sufferer sends relief. With boldness therefore at the throne, let us make all our sorrows known and ask the aid of Heavenly Power to help us in the evil hour. How wonderful this is my brethren.

How wonderful that our great High Priest who is the guardian of man, wears our nature before the throne of God. If you end up there near the throne and God would allow you to look; for I don’t know how we can look on that awesome sight. But if you were permitted to look, there would be creatures you couldn’t identify. There would be strange creatures there before the throne having four faces and six wings, and with twain they would cover their face, and with twain they would cover their feet, and with twain they would fly. And you would see angels there so strange that Abraham saw and Jacob saw going up and down the ladder. And you wouldn’t be able to identify them quite because you’ve never seen an angel.

And I suppose there are other creatures there. I read about them in Daniel and Revelation that you couldn’t identify quite. But you know, as you drew near the throne, you would recognize one order of being. You would say look, look, look, I recognize this. I’m familiar with this shape, this form. I know this–this is a Man. This is a Man! This has two legs under him. This has two arms. This, this is a Man.

Ah my friend, the Great High Priest our nature wears, and the guardian of mankind appears. And though you might be very much of a stranger among those strange creatures yonder, there would be one Being that you would know. You would say, if I grew up among them, I knew them; I’ve seen them go down the street and come up the street. I’ve seen little ones and big ones and black ones and yellow ones and red ones. I’ve seen them. I know this is a Man. And He would smile down from the throne because though now ascended up on high, He bends on earth a brother’s eye, partaker of the human name, He knows the frailty of our frame. Now don’t pity yourself brother, but don’t be ashamed to go and tell God all about your troubles. He knows all about your troubles.

There’s a little song that says, nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. But there’s Somebody that knows alright. And our fellow Sufferer still retains a fellow feeling for our pains and still remembers in the skies, his tears, his agonies and cries. And though He’s now at the right hand of the Father Almighty sitting crowned in glory, waiting, of course, that great Coronation Day that yet is to come. But though He is there, and though they cry all around about Him, worthy is the Lamb, He hasn’t forgotten all of it. He hasn’t forgotten the nails in the hands. He hasn’t forgotten the tears and the agonies and cries; and He knows everything about you. He knows. He knows when the doctor hates to tell you and your friends come and try to be unnaturally encouraging. You know and cheerful and in your deep heart, you’re too smart. You know something’s deeply wrong. And they won’t tell you, but He knows. He knows.

Well, I believe this, with boldness therefore at the throne let us make all our sorrows known and ask the aid of Heavenly Power to help us in the evil hour. The mercy of God is an ocean divine of boundless and fathomless flood. Let’s plunge out into the mercy of God and come to know it. Amen. Amen. You’ve been a very quiet congregation. I haven’t had a peep out of anybody. But I hope you’ll believe what I’ve said, because you’re going to need this mercy. Terribly, terribly bad if you don’t already have it; the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. Amen and Amen. All right.