41 Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord,
your salvation according to your promise;
42 then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me,
for I trust in your word.
43 And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth,
for my hope is in your rules.
44 I will keep your law continually,
forever and ever,
45 and I shall walk in a wide place,
for I have sought your precepts.
46 I will also speak of your testimonies before kings
and shall not be put to shame,
47 for I find my delight in your commandments,
which I love.
48 I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love,
and I will meditate on your statutes.
Sermon 47 (Psalm 119:41)
- In this prayer and address to God you may observe— 1. The cause and fountain of all, thy mercies. 2. The effect or thing asked, salvation. 3. The warrant or ground of his expectation, according to thy word. 4. The effectual application of the benefit asked, come also unto me. The sum of the verse may be given you in this point.
- Doct. That the salvation of God is the fruit of his mercy, and effectually dispensed and applied to his people according to his word. There is a twofold salvation—temporal and eternal.
- 1. Temporal salvation is deliverance from temporal dangers.
- 2. Eternal deliverance from hell and wrath, together with that positive blessedness which is called eternal life.
- God’s children often fall into such straits that nothing but mercy can help them out. All deliverance is the fruit of mercy pitying our misery, but some deliverance especially is the fruit of mercy pardoning our sin, I shall give you some special cases, both as to danger and sin.
- In all cases as to danger, it is mercy which appears, partly because God’s great argument to move him is the misery of his people.
- Mercy relents towards a sinful people, when they are a wasted people. Partly because when there are no other means to help, mercy unexpectedly findeth out means for us. We are at an utter loss in ourselves; God finds out means of relief for us:
- Many afflictions are the strokes of God’s immediate hand, or the common effects of his providence permitting the malice of men for our trial and exercise; but some are the proper effects of our own sins. We run ourselves into inconveniences by our folly, and even then mercy findeth a way of escape for us.
- God is very merciful to poor creatures. See in how many notions God’s mercy is represented to us. A distinct consideration of them yieldeth an advantage in believing; for though they express the same thing, yet every notion begetteth a fresh thought, by which mercy is more taken abroad in the view of conscience.
- The next notion is grace, which noteth the free bounty of God, and excludeth all means on the creature’s part. Grace doth all gratis, freely, though there be no precedent debt or obligation, or hope of recompense, whereby anything can accrue to God. His external motive is our misery, his internal motive his own grace.
- The Lord is not easily overcome by the wrongs or sins of the creature. He doth not only pity our misery—that is mercy, and do us good for nothing—that is grace, but beareth long with our infirmities—that is slowness to anger.
- Men are ready to anger, slow to mercy, quickly inflamed, and hardly appeased; but it is quite the contrary with God. It is good to observe the difference between God and man. Man cannot make anything of a sudden, but destroyeth it in an instant. When men are to make anything, they are long about it, as building a house is a long work; but plucking it down and undermining it is done in a short time. But God is quick in making, slow in destroying; he made the world in six days. He could have done it in a moment, were it not that he would give us a pattern of labour and order in all things. Now it hath continued for six thousand years, and upwards, as some account. Such is his longsuffering. How many of us has God borne with for ten, twenty, thirty years, from childhood to grey hairs, from the cradle to the grave!
- We have not one sin, but many; not one misery, but many; therefore mercies are needful to us.
- Certainly God is merciful, there is no end nor measure nor bank nor bottom in his mercy; but throughout the whole scriptures mercy is only promised to the penitent, and those that come to God by Christ.
- God is not merciful by accident, but by nature; the sun doth not more naturally shine, nor fire more naturally burn, nor water more naturally flow, than God doth naturally show mercy.
- It is plentiful in God; he is rich in mercy, abundant in goodness truth. Thy sins are like a spark of fire that falleth into the ocean; it is quenched presently. So are all thy sins in the ocean of God’s mercy; there is not more water in the sea than there is mercy in God.
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