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THE MERCY OF GOD

T. D. Beveridge

I would like to speak about mercy—sovereign mercy. It does not say that grace is sovereign, but mercy is sovereign, and everybody in this room, including the preacher, needs mercy.

Today, in this dispensation, the glad tidings is that mercy is available to meet you just as you are. I have not read the narrative about this man in Luke 10 but I have no doubt that even the little children here could tell the story of the man who fell among thieves. He was wounded and left in a half-dead state, in other words, the only thing that could help him was mercy or compassion. You will not find much of it in the world. I would not say you would not find any, because I have sometimes been affected by finding persons who did not know the Lord Jesus, and there was compassion with them. We sometimes sing,

‘What good in creatures may be found

Is all derived from Thee’. (Hymn 444)

If good is there, it has its source in the blessed God.

Tonight, I want to say, everyone needs mercy, and the God I am speaking of is rich in mercy. He has plenty of it to give out to needy sinners. But the thing is, friend, do you know that you are a sinner? The glad tidings does not gloss over matters. God speaks in His word very distinctly, and no one is to be left in any doubt about the need for having a link in faith with the Lord Jesus Christ, the theme of the gospel, Jesus the Saviour. The scripture says, “thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins”, Matthew 1: 21. What a Person the Lord Jesus is! I would like to make much of Him as God has done. God has exalted Him and given Him a Name, that which is above every name. You could name any name you wish in the history of this world, and there have been some very great personages, but the Name of Jesus is above them all, “God highly exalted him, and granted him a name, that which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow”, Philippians 2: 9, 10.

Now, friend, He is there as a Saviour, but the wonder of the glad tidings is that we can speak about the Person of Jesus, and of His work. He came into the world as a Babe in Bethlehem’s manger, and from His birth to His boyhood and into manhood, there was divine perfection. In other words, all that God looked for in man He found in the Lord Jesus. It says at the beginning of John’s gospel, “And the Word became flesh”, John 1: 14. God Himself came into the very condition in which you and I are, but sin apart. It says of the Lord Jesus, “holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners”, Hebrews 7: 26. So even if we thought of Enoch, and other personages that are mentioned in the Scriptures, none could be compared with the Lord Jesus; He is unique. If the matter of your sins and my sins was to be met God required a spotless Victim, one who could bear the matter of sin and sins, and He had that one in the Person of the Lord Jesus. What a matter the glad tidings is! There is no other message to be compared with it in this world. You think of all the words that have been uttered by various persons in the world since the Lord Jesus was here, you think of the multitude of words spoken, but none of the messages that has been uttered in this world can be compared with God’s glad tidings concerning His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

But then, wonderful as that is, unless you have been convicted as to your sinnership before a holy God with whom you will have to do, it will not avail for your blessing. Let us not doubt that, everyone here, including the preacher, will have to do with God. In this dispensation, which we sometimes speak about as the dispensation of faith, you can have to do with God about your sins now, so that you will not have to meet Him in your sins. Because if you die in your sins you will be raised in your sins. That is the greatness of the God with whom we have to do. Persons think that if they die all is finished, they think everything terminates with death. What a delusion of Satan! You remember in the beginning of Genesis, how out of the dust God made Adam, and breathed into him and man became a living soul. The blessed God desires in the glad tidings to secure again His creature man from his lost condition. So without Christ you are lost, and if you are still in your sins and you die in your sins, you will be raised in your sins. O, the awfulness of that! I am not here to occupy you with gloom, but that is a fact, there will be persons lost. It speaks of that in the Scriptures, persons who are lost, the glad tidings veiled in those who are lost. O, friend, God is appealing to you.

What I want to say to you tonight is that there is an abundance of divine mercy to reach you where you are. That man who fell among the robbers, there he was, left wounded and in a half-dead state. What could he do for himself?

My friend, if you are without Christ you need Him. You are helpless and, in that sense, you are just like this man. In the section we read he was wounded and helpless. A priest and a Levite came along and saw him and passed by. But the good Samaritan journeying, saw him and came up to him. Jesus would come up to you where you are. How fully God, who is rich in mercy, has been expressed in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ! He has given Him, and having given the Lord Jesus Christ He has there the spotless Victim who could bear the matter of sin and sins, as the scripture says, “who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Peter 2: 24. That was the Lord Jesus, what a Person He is!

Friend, if you feel you are lost, or there are doubts and uncertainties in your mind, that can be resolved on the ground of the work of Christ; His sufferings, His death and blood-shedding, His burial and His rising again. If your sins and my sins were to be forgiven, it necessitated that the blood of Jesus was shed. His blood has been shed, and God is satisfied as He looks on the blood of Jesus. In Exodus, if the households of the children of Israel were to escape the destroying angel, they had to take the blood of the passover lamb and put it on the door-posts and on the lintel, so that when Jehovah came and saw the blood He did not suffer the destroyer to come into that house. If you have come under the shelter of the blood of Jesus, by putting your faith in the Person of the Lord Jesus and in His redemptive work, you are saved. There is nothing unsure or unstable in the glad tidings; God has laid the basis righteously in the death and blood-shedding, and the burial and the rising again of the Lord Jesus He is a Prince and a Saviour, available for every one in Dundee, and indeed for all men.

There is sufficiency in the glad tidings of Jesus to meet men and women and boys and girls in all their need. We are in a world that is full of indifference to Christ, and God in His word would speak powerfully to arouse persons to feel their need.

Then, sometimes He speaks in a soft gentle voice, the voice crying at the crossway. Maybe there is someone here at the crossway. God would speak to you tonight. He wants to assure you that there is mercy for you tonight. We cannot speak about what will happen tomorrow, or the next week, because we do not have authority to do that, but now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation. So that if the word of God touches your heart or affects your conscience, let it work. There is nothing like a troubled soul; it is a good thing if you become troubled in your soul because God is working with you. Someone sitting next to you might not know it; but you know in your own soul when God is having to do with you. I can remember as a boy, knowing that God was speaking to me. It was a man who was preaching, but I knew all that was being said was coming from God Himself. It affected my conscience and my heart, and God does that because He loves you. Think of that! “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son” (John 3: 16). Jesus the One I am speaking about.

How good God is. If we have been brought up by Christian parents and persons who love Christ, what a privilege we have of hearing Him spoken of, and also among saints, being together and speaking about His word.

Then, with all that there comes responsibility. As a preacher I am responsible to convey what God’s heart and God’s mind is towards you; but then, as God speaks, those who hear the word become responsible. I have known persons to be at a gospel preaching and having gone out they will say, I will put it off, I will wait. What a danger there is in that! “We will hear thee again also concerning this” (Acts 17: 32), that is what they said when Paul preached in Athens. He was painfully excited seeing the city given up to idolatry, and when he preached to them he spoke about the God that men might feel after. There are persons feeling after God, they want to find Him. They want to pray, they want to know that He is there, and God speaks directly in the glad tidings; He does not come in a circuitous way. He comes directly to you just where you are and as you are. Remember the man in the jail at Philippi, he saw all the things that had happened after the earthquake and he was going to kill himself. The man was real, he said, “Sirs, what must I do that I may be saved?”, Acts 16: 30. O, that persons were aroused out of indifference so that they would utter these words. And the answer is simple, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved”. O, the simplicity of it. As I see life now it is becoming terribly complicated, but there is a need to be simple concerning the matter of your soul and your salvation. Do not let the business of the world and all that is transpiring around us so engage us that these matters of our soul salvation and our link with the Lord are set aside. God has in mind the richest blessing for us, and there is an abundance of mercy tonight to reach you, wherever you are, that you might form a link in faith with the Lord Jesus Christ.

So this Samaritan came along to this wounded man, pouring in oil and wine, and at the end of the section Jesus asks this lawyer, “Which now of these three seems to thee to have been neighbour of him who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “He that shewed him mercy”. O, friend, God wants to show mercy to you tonight, but the thing is, Do you feel you need it? This man was helpless to meet his condition. It is God’s great resource, divine mercy. Man fails in his responsibility; I have failed, you have failed, all men have failed; but God falls back on His mercy, and He is extending it tonight. He would bless men—He is conveying His compassion and His love. His mercy is available to meet you just as you are.

There is nothing to be attained to, nothing you could merit in your life, it is mercy alone. Paul says, I obtained mercy. Friend, have you come this way?

There are many references to mercy in the Scriptures, but the one in Romans affected me. It says, “For God hath shut up together all in unbelief, in order that he might shew mercy to all”. What a God He is! How much He has in mind, that persons who are sinners should come into the knowledge of Christ as Saviour, and have the forgiveness of sins. I never belittle that, because the relief of forgiveness is an experience that is to be valued increasingly by every one of us. The children know if they have done something wrong and they come to their parents, and confess that they have done something wrong, forgiveness is extended. There is a relief, if you have known your sins forgiven, what relief you can enjoy. If you are carrying a burden that you have not confessed how unsettled you are. If we confess our sins He is able to forgive them. God can forgive sins, He is a forgiving God. He is not only prepared to do that, but He is prepared to justify you. Finally you will be glorified, how wonderful! What great and glorious thoughts God has for the one who comes by way of believing in His word, and coming into the gain of the mercy that I have been speaking of.

It says here that God has “shut up together all in unbelief, in order that he might shew mercy to all”. It will not be that there will always be mercy. We are in a most wonderful dispensation of grace and mercy but it will not always be thus. This is not the time to preach judgment, but, nevertheless, there is a time of judgment to come. Persons who have been under the sound of the glad tidings and been made aware of the fact that divine mercy is available to meet them as they are and where they are, have to accept responsibility for the word. Those who despise that, and reject the Lord Jesus Christ will have to do with Him as a Judge. I am not going to say any more as to that, but I trust we all have an impression as to the wonder of mercy. How feebly I have spoken about it, but how great a matter it is that God is rich in mercy, and He is dispensing it to souls who need it. The man we have read of was helpless and the only thing that could meet his condition was divine mercy. God has it tonight, and it is available for you; for the children, for the middle-aged and for the old. How persons need mercy, and it is there abundantly.

Then God has in mind not only the forgiveness of sins, but that you should have the gift of the blessed Holy Spirit. What resources God has! We speak of divine Persons, that is God, having revealed Himself in this dispensation in the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, these three divine Persons, all towards us in infinite divine love. When you come to divine love how deep it is and, as has been said, God is love. I think it is Mr. Darby who said, What is simplest is deepest, and that is the love of God. How great His mercy is!

How great His righteousness is! All these things come into the glad tidings. God has established matters righteously outside of us. He has established them in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. All that is needed is for you and me to come by way of repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Now these are things that have been often said, but they are to be inward experiences in the souls and hearts of men, and women and boys and girls who, maybe, do not understand all that I have said, but can understand something of the Lord Jesus Christ. We used to sing a hymn, ‘Jesus loves me’, and that is true. He loves you now. He died to save you; His precious blood was shed that you might put your trust in Him and be saved now and eternally. We can think of things in finite terms and time, but the blessed God that we have to do with is outside of that. How great He is! Greater than creation. Think of the immensity of creation. We read of other stars and what men are finding in the vastness of the universe. The blessed God I am speaking of, brought them into being by His power. Yet He is interested in an individual soul, like this man who was wounded, and He is dispensing mercy and there is an abundance of it. God is rich in mercy.

My friend, you can have it tonight wherever you are, as you are. May you come to know the Lord Jesus as your own Saviour. It is a personal matter. We do not come in big companies to the Lord Jesus, we come one by one; you come to Him for yourself. You come to know Him as your own Lord and Saviour; the One who died for you; the One who shed His precious blood; and the One who lay in the grave; the One who rose from the grave, and ascended into heaven itself. He is there a Prince and a Saviour. Soon the lovers of Himself will be there with Him for ever. How wonderful that will be! What a future a believer has! What could you find in this world to compare with it? Would it be wealth? Would it be position? Nothing is to be compared with where Jesus is. I trust He is the Saviour of every one here, and that we have all enjoyed the fulness of this mercy I have been speaking of, for His name’s sake.

Preaching at Dundee
27 August 2000

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