Daily Devotionals

Devotional: April 4th

GOD’S INEXHAUSTIBLE MERCY

O Israel, hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption. And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. - Psalms 130:7-8

There is nothing which isolates a man so awfully as a consciousness of sin and of his relation to God. But there is nothing that so knits him to all his fellows, and brings him into such wide-reaching bonds of amity and benevolence, as the sense of God’s forgiving mercy for his own sin. So the call bursts from the lips of the pardoned man, inviting all to taste the experience and exercise the trust which have made him glad: " Let Israel hope in the Lord." Look at the broad Gospel he has come to preach. " For with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is redemption." Not only forgiveness; but redemption - and that from every form of sin. It is "plenteous" - multiplied, as the word might be rendered. Our Lord has taught us to what a sum that Divine multiplication amounts. Not once, nor twice, nor thrice, but " seventy times seven " is the prescribed measure of human forgiveness; and shall men be more placable than God? The perfect numbers, seven and ten multiplied together, and that again increased sevenfold, to make a numerical symbol for the Innumerable, and to bring the Infinite within the terms of the Finite. It is inexhaustible redemption, not to be provoked, not to be overcome by any obstinacy of evil - available for all, available for every grade and every repetition of transgression. That forgiving grace is older and mightier than all sins, and is able to conquer them all. As when an American prairie for hundreds of miles is smoking in the autumn fires, nothing that man can do can cope with it. But the clouds gather, and down comes the rain, and there is water enough in the sky to put out the fire. And so God’s inexhaustible mercy, streaming down upon the lurid smoke-pillars of man’s transgression, and that alone, is weight enough to quench the flame of man’s, and of a world’s, transgressions, heated from the lowest hell. "With Him is plenteous redemption; He shall redeem Israel from a his iniquities." That is the Old Testament prophecy. Let me leave on your hearts the New Testament fulfillment of it. The Psalmist said, " He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities." He was sure of that, and his soul was at "peace in believing" it. But there were mysteries about it which he could not understand. He lived in the twilight dawn, and he and all his fellows had to watch for the morning, of which they saw but the faint promise in the Eastern sky. The sun is risen for us - " Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins." That is the fulfillment, the vindication, and the explanation of the Psalmist’s hope. Lay hold of Christ, and He will lift you out of the depths, and set you upon the sunny heights of the mountain of God.

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