Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3170
“His compassions…are new every morning: great is Your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22,23.
THE Book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah is very dolorous. When you look upon the dragons, owls, pelicans and bitterns of the wilderness, you have a fit picture of his mournful state. He was full of grief, like a bottle needing vent. His heart was ready to burst with wormwood and with gall.
But the whole current changes when the Prophet brings to his remembrance the mercy of God! No sooner does he think of the compassions of the Most High than at once he takes his harp from the willows and begins to sing as joyously as ever that sweet singer of Israel, David, sang before him. And, truly, if we, too, instead of harping upon our miseries, would but reflect upon our mercies, we would exchange our mournful dirges for songs ofjoy!
It is true that God’s people are a tried people, but it is equally true that God’s Grace is equal to their trials! It is quite true that through much tribulation they enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but then they do enter—and the thought of the Kingdom that is coming sustains them in their present tribulation! They wade through the waters of woe, often breast-deep, but the billows do not, and shall not, go over them! They shall still be able to sing even in the midst of the tempest. I would suggest to any here who are in the habit of complaining—and I would remind you that it is a very bad habit—and to any of you who have become chronic murmurers, that this temper of mind is exceedingly sinful. While, on the other hand, the remembrance of God’s mercy and grateful talk about it is a virtuous habit—one which is honoring to God as well as strengthening and profitable to our own souls. Imitate Jeremiah, then, and if you can find no comfort in your present outward circumstances, meditate upon the unfailing mercies of God!
What a blessed word that is which the Prophet here uses, “compassions”! David uses the word, “pity,” more frequently, but he means the same thing. It is a humbling word, though exceedingly consolatory. I have often felt very deeply chastened in my own soul at the remembrance of the text, “Like as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him.” What? Is this the Lord’s attitude towards even the strongest and the best of saints? Does God only pity them? Yes, it is even so—those that do exploits, those that lead the van in the day of battle, those to whom we look up with respect and admiration, God looks upon with Infinite Love—but that love still takes the form of pity. He can see their weakness where we only see their strength. He can discover their defects where we merely admire the work of the Holy Spirit in them. And, therefore, He regards them with pity. Yet it is a Father’s pity, the pity of a Father who smiles at the weakness of the child, knowing that the attempt which it is making, though a feeble one, will educate it for something better! And foreseeing that it will, by-and-by, outgrow its weakness and be able to do greater things.
God has compassion for the best of His people, but it is compassion prompted by love. It is not the pity that is akin to scorn, but the pity which melts from love, as the honey drops from the honeycomb. I would again ask our dear friends who are tried and troubled to think of the Infinite Pity of God towards them. He has smitten you, but still, not as hard as He might have done! Out of pity He has stayed His hand. He has spoken sharply to you through your own conscience, but if He had spoken as loudly as your sins deserved, there would have been loud thunder-claps instead of gentle admonitions! He has withered your gourds, but if He had done to you what stern justice might have demanded, it would not have been the gourd that would have withered, but you, yourself, would have wasted away!
Admire the compassion of God toward you! Even if one child in your family is sick, they are not all sick. If the Lord has taken away one of your friends by death, there are many other friends still left to cheer and comfort you. You have had heavy losses in business, but you are not bankrupt. You are not in good health, but still, you have not been stricken
with the diseases which have attacked some others—your pain is bearable. It is true that the weather is dull and heavy to your spirit, but it is not the blackness of “the valley of the shadow of death.” Take heart even in the midst of affliction and chastisement, for the compassion of God is still to be seen!
Moved by such thoughts as these, the Prophet penned the remarkable words before us, “His compassions are new every morning: great is Your faithfulness.” I have been admiring the first sentence of the text which suggests to me the novelties of Divine Mercy. And as I speak upon it, I mean to get you to preach to yourselves, to wake up your recollections, to ask you to turn over a few pages in your old notebooks, to make you look at your diaries and remember what God has done for you since you first savingly knew His name.