Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2882
“There is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared.” Psalm 130:4.
THIS is good news, indeed—the best of news—and they will prize it most who are like the Psalmist was when he wrote these words. And who are they?
First, they are those who are in soul-trouble—“Out of the depths have I cried unto You, O Lord.” Some of you may, perhaps, think this subject is a very commonplace one, but the soul that is in deep spiritual trouble will not think so. Bread is a very commonplace thing, but it is very precious to starving men. Liberty is an everyday enjoyment to us, but it would be a great gift to those who are in slavery. O you who are in the depths of soul-trouble, like shipwrecked mariners who seem to be sinking in the trough of the sea, or being dragged down by a whirlpool—this text will bring sweet music to your ears! “There is forgiveness.” There is forgiveness with God.
This good news will also have a peculiar sweetness to those who have begun to pray. Read the second verse—“Lord, hear my voice: let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.” Prayer makes men value spiritual blessings. They are asking for them. They are sincerely seeking them. They are knocking loudly at Mercy’s gate in order to obtain them. And they who are in earnest in their prayers prove that they value the blessing they are seeking and they are delighted to hear that they are likely to secure it. Oh, that it might be said, for the first time, of someone here, “Behold, he prays.” I am sure that such an one will be right glad to listen to even the simplest language that tells out these glad tidings—“There is forgiveness with God.”
And if, to soul-trouble and earnest prayer, there should be added a very deep sense of sin amounting, even, to utter self-condemnation, then I am quite certain that there is no carol that will have sweeter music in it than my text has! Read the third verse and see if you can truly repeat it—“If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” Do you feel that your iniquities condemn you? Are you compelled to plead guilty before God? Well, then, though you cannot claim acquittal on the ground that you have no sins, yet here is the blessed information that there is forgiveness for sinners! Stand in the dock where the guilty ought to stand and let the Judge condemn you. No, spare Him the trouble— condemn yourself and, when you have done so, and have also trusted the great Atonement made by His dear Son, He will say to you, “There is forgiveness. Be of good cheer—your sins, which are many, are all forgiven you.” I do not expect to say anything to delight deaf ears, but I do believe that the simple tidings I have to tell will have great weight with those who are in soul-trouble, with those who have begun to pray—and those who are self-condemned on account of sin.
I am going to take the text thus. First, here is a most cheering announcement—“There is forgiveness with You.” Secondly, here is a most admirable design—“That You may be feared.”
I. First, here is A MOST CHEERING ANNOUNCEMENT—“There is forgiveness with You.”
This announcement has great force and value because it is most certainly true. When a man hears some news which pleases him, he loses that pleasure if he has reason to suspect that it is not true. The first questions you ask, when someone tells you of some good fortune that concerns you, are of this sort, “Are you quite sure it is so? Can you give me good authority for your assertion?”
Well, this news is certainly true, for it is consistent with God’s very Nature. He is a gracious God. “He delights in mercy.” Mercy was the last of His attributes that He was able to reveal. He could be great and good when the world was made, but He could not be merciful until sin had marred His perfect handiwork. There must be an offense committed before there can be mercy displayed towards the offender. Mercy, then, I may say, is God’s Benjamin—His last-born, His favored one, the son of His right hand. I never read that He delights in power, or that He delights in justice, but I do read, “He delights in mercy.” It is the attribute that is sweetest to Himself to exercise. When He goes forth to punish, as He must, His feet are, as it were, shod with iron—but when He comes to manifest His mercy, He rides, as David says, “upon the wings of the wind.” He delights to be gracious and, therefore, I feel sure that there is forgiveness with Him.
We are even more sure that it is so when we remember that God has given us the best pledge of forgiveness by giving us His dear Son. He could not be merciful at the expense of His justice, for His Throne is established in righteousness and that righteousness requires that He should by no means spare the guilty. How, then, could He display His Grace and mercy and yet be the just God? He did it thus. The offended One took the nature and the place of the offenders and here, on this earth, Jesus of Nazareth, who was “very God of very God,” suffered all that we had brought upon ourselves, that the Law of God might be honored by executing its full penalty and yet that the Free Grace and mighty mercy of God might be equally manifest. If any of you doubt whether there is forgiveness with God, I pray you to stand on Calvary, in imagination, and to look into the wounds of Jesus. Gaze upon His nail-pierced hands and feet, His thorn-crowned brow, and look right into His heart where the soldier’s spear was thrust—and blood and water flowed out for the double cleansing of all who trust Him. O Christ of God, it could not be that You should die and yet that sinners cannot be forgiven! It would be a monstrous thing that You should have bled to death and yet that no sinner should be saved by that death! It cannot be—there must be forgiveness—there is forgiveness since Jesus died, “the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.”