Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1886
“Nevertheless He regarded their affliction, when He heard their cry: And He remembered, for their sake, His Covenant, and repented according to the multitude of His mercies.” Psalm 106:44,45.
THIS Psalm deserves to be read very carefully. It mentions many of the afflictions of God’s ancient people, but it clearly sets forth that their afflictions were the distinct result of their rebellions and sins. It is not so with all the afflictions of God’s people. It is written, “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten.” And again, “Every branch in me that bears fruit, He purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit.” Yet it is often so to this day that the servants of God smart because of disobedience. They are chastened for their sin, as it is written, “You only have I known of all the people of the earth, therefore I will punish you for your iniquities.” Sin in a child of God cannot go unchastened. The rod of chastisement is included in the Covenant and, if we are in the Covenant, the Lord will keep His promise. “If his children forsake My law, and walk not in My judgments, then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes.”
The miseries of Israel of old were distinctly the result of their sins. They lived under a dispensation in which there was a visible reward for obedience and a prompt temporal punishment for disobedience. Therefore one might suppose that if the people fell into affliction willfully and through their own fault, the Lord might see fit to leave them in it. Did they not procure it unto themselves? Yet such is the abundant compassion of our God, that as soon as ever these people, smarting under the result of their sin, began to cry to Him, “He regarded their affliction when He heard their cry.” He might have justly said, “Go to the gods that you have set up; tell your sorrows to the calves that you have made. Ask succor at the hands of the dead whom you have consulted, or of the cruel deities to whom you have sacrificed your sons and your daughters.” But instead of thus meeting them in righteous wrath, He is tender and full of compassion for them!
I will read you the words again, for they are inexpressibly sweet—“Nevertheless He regarded their affliction, when He heard their cry.” There is something very powerful about the cry of a child to its own parent and God, the most tender of all fathers, cannot bear to hear His children cry—
“Such pity as a father has
Unto his children dear,
Like pity shows the Lord to such
As worship Him in fear.”
If there are any here who are brought low and sorely distressed through their own wrong-doing, let them, nevertheless, cry unto the Lord. Though it is because of your transgressions and your iniquities that you are afflicted, yet you may cry unto the Lord in your trouble and He will save you out of your distresses. Turn unto the hand that wounds you and that hand will bind you up. Turn unto the Lord in repentance and He will turn unto you in loving kindness.
What was the secret reason why God thus dealt with His people and heard their cry when they were in affliction through their sin? The secret reason was that, “for their sake He remembered His Covenant.” If He looked upon His people in their sin and their sorrow, He could not see anything in them to justify why He should have pity upon them. What they endured they richly deserved and He knew that if He took away His rod from them, they would go and commit the same wickedness again. They were not to be driven by judgment nor drawn by mercies. Though they humbled themselves for one moment, they would soon be proud again! The Lord could see nothing hopeful about them, nothing in their future any more than in their past which should plead for mercy.
Why should they be smitten any more? Or why should gentleness be further wasted on them? Was it not high time to say, “They are given to their idols, leave them alone, that We may see what their end will be”? One Divine reason prevented the infliction of justice—this, and this alone, sufficed—“for their sake He remembered His Covenant.” If He could not see anything in the erring people, or hope for anything from them, He looked to another source for a motive and an argument for mercy—He looked to the Covenant which He had made of old with their father, Abraham, when He said, “Surely, blessing I will bless you, and in you and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” Because He had once permitted that promise to go out of His mouth, He would not withdraw it! And when He heard their cry, He regarded their affliction. Is it not a great wonder that God not only is willing to give mercy, should there be a manifest reason for it, but that He, Himself, finds and makes the reason? When there is no motive for Grace discoverable to our anxious eyes, there is a fountain of self-created mercy in the Lord’s own heart—and this He causes to overflow and fill a channel of His own making! Though there is nothing in the creature, there is everything in the Covenant. If the Lord can find no plea in the character of the offender, He discovers an argument in Himself—He remembers His own Covenant and, for His own name’s sake, He deals in mercy with the guilty!