Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2702
“Show Your marvelous loving kindness.” Psalm 17:7.
THE Lord’s people, in the time of their trouble, know where to go for comfort and relief. Being taught of God, they do not hew out for themselves broken cisterns which can hold no water, but they turn to the ever-flowing Fountain, they go to the Wellhead—even to God Himself—and there they cast themselves down and drink to the full. David, when he wrote this Psalm, was evidently in very great distress and, therefore, he says, “I have called upon You, for You will hear me, O God: incline Your ear unto me, and hear my speech.” What he needed was his God, as Dr. Watts expresses it—
“In darkest shades if He appears,
My dawning is begun.
He is my soul’s sweet morning star,
And He my rising sun.”
Believers draw comfort both from God’s ordinary and extraordinary dealings with them, for they regard God’s loving kindness as being both an ordinary and an extraordinary thing. I have heard of a good Sister who, when a friend narrated to her some very gracious dealing of God, was asked the question, “Is it not very wonderful?” and she replied, “No, it is not wonderful, for it is just like Him.” Begging her pardon and admitting the great Truth of God that she meant to convey, I think it is still more wonderful that it should be “just like Him.” The wonder of extraordinary love is that God should make it such an ordinary thing, that He should give to us “marvelous loving kindness,” and yet should give it so often that it becomes a daily blessing, and still remains marvelous! The marvels of men, after you have seen them a few times, cease to excite any wonder. I suppose there is scarcely a building, however costly its materials, and however rare its architecture, as to which, sooner or later, you will not feel that you have seen enough of it. But God’s wonderful works never pall upon you. You could gaze upon Mont Blanc, or you could stand and watch Niagara Falls, yet never feel that you had exhausted all its marvels. And everyone knows how the ocean is never twice alike. They who live close to it and look upon it every hour of the day, still see God’s wonders in the deep!
That God should bless us every day is a theme for our comfort. God’s ordinary ways charm us. The verse before our text says, “‘I have called upon You, for You will hear me, O God.’ I know You will, for the blessing that I am about to ask from You is a thing that I have been accustomed to receive from You. I know You will hear me, for You have heard me in the past; it is a habit of Yours to listen to my supplications, and to grant my requests.” I hope we can argue in a similar fashion, yet, at the same time, God’s people draw equal comfort from the extraordinary character of the mercies He bestows upon them. They appeal to Him to show them His “marvelous loving kindness,” to let them see the wonderful side of it as well as the common side of it. To let them behold His miracles of mercy, His extravagances of love, His superfluities of kindness—I scarcely know what words to use when talking of what the Apostle Paul calls “the riches of His Grace, wherein He has abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence,” “the exceeding riches of His Grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”
I want, on this occasion, to dwell upon the extraordinary side of God’s loving kindness and, using our text as a prayer, to say to the Lord in the language of David, “Show Your marvelous loving kindness.” Sometimes a man is
brought into such a condition that he feels that if God does not do something quite out of the common order of things, he will assuredly perish. He has now come to such a pass, that if some extraordinary Grace is not displayed towards him, all is over with him. Well, now, such a Brother may think that God will not give this extraordinary Grace to him. He may be troubled at the idea that some marvelous thing is needed. It is to meet that suggestion of unbelief that I am going to address you now.
I. And my first remark is that ALL THE LOVING KINDNESS OF GOD IS MARVELOUS.
The least mercy from God is a miracle. That God does not crush our sinful race is a surprising mercy. That you and I should have been spared to live—even though it were only to exist in direst poverty, or in sorest sickness—that we should have been spared at all, after what we have been and after what we have done, is a very marvelous thing. The explanation of the marvel is given in the Book of Malachi—“I am the Lord, I change not; therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed.” If God had possessed such a short temper as men often have, He would have made short work with us all. But He is gracious and long-suffering and, therefore, he is very patient with us. The very least mercy that we ever receive from God is a very wonderful thing, but when we think of all that is meant by this blessed word, “loving kindness”— which is a compound of all sorts of sweetness, a mixture of fragrances to make up one absolutely perfect perfume—when we take that word, “loving kindness,” and think over its meaning, we shall see that it is a marvelous thing, indeed, that it describes!