Bible Studies

A STUDY OF PSALM 27 VERSE 7

by GLENN PEASE
01/29/22
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7 Hear my voice when I call, O LORD;
be merciful to me and answer me.

1. It is extremely frustrating when it seems like God is not even listening to your prayer, and that is how David is feeling at this point. It is surprising, for he has been so positive and optimistic up to this point, and he was acting as if every prayer he uttered was answered on the spot. Now, all of the sudden, he is pleading for God to pay attention to his cry for help. He is praying for his prayer, and asking that it might be heard. His theme in this moment of prayer is the mercy of God. He does not tell us why he suddenly feels the need for God to be merciful to him. It seems that God has been more than merciful in allowing him to face an army of vicious attackers without fear, and come out a winner with awesome odds against him. Why he is now so fearful that God's mercy will forsake him is a mystery, but it reveals what is a true emotional roller coaster that believers go through. At any moment a believer can be struck with the emotion of doubt and fear. It is one of the paradoxes of the believer's life. He can be riding high in victorious faith, and then suddenly feel the black cloud of negative emotions shutting out the light of the sun. He can come away from a service where he shouted in praise to God for his grace and love, and then while riding home feel a gloom coming over him because of his sin or failure, or any number of negative thoughts that rob him of the joy of his salvation. This seems to be what is happening to David at this point. This positive Psalm suddenly turns to a negative plea for help.

1B. When life takes a turn to the negative side our prayers tend to become very self centered, and this is normal, as it was here with David. We feel a need, and that need sometimes dominates us so that our prayers are all about us and our need. There is no intercession here for anyone else in their need, but only his own that takes center stage. Self-centeredness is sometimes a place where we need to be, for we are not much good for anyone else until we get right ourselves.

2. Newell C. McMahan has written a poem about how we can feel so negative about our prayers not being answered. I will share a part of it. He wrote-

DO YOU EVER DESPAIR?
WHEN IT SEEMS GOD DOESN'T ANSWER YOUR PRAYER?

DO YOU EVER PRAY EARNESTLY FOR GOD TO MEET A NEED IN YOUR LIFE,
AND YOU PRAY FERVENTLY TO OVERCOME ALL HINDRANCES AND STRIFE?
WHEN YOU HAVE FINANCIAL NEEDS AND THE HEAVEN SEEMS TO BE BRASS,
AND IT SEEMS GOD ANSWERS ALL OTHERS PRAYERS BUT OURS HE SEEMS TO PASS.

HAVE YOU PRAYED AND PRAYED AND DONE YOUR BEST TO PRAY THRU,
WHEN YOU HAVE CONFESSED ALL SIN AND DONE ALL THAT YOU KNOW TO DO.
WHEN YOU HAVE DONE EVERYTHING THE BIBLE SAYS IN TRYING TO PRAY,
WHEN YOU HAVE EXHAUSTED YOUR RESOURCES AND DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY.

DO YOU EVER COME TO THE POINT OF SEEMINGLY UTTER DESPAIR,
WHEN YOU PRAY AND GOD DOESN'T SEEM TO ANSWER YOUR PRAYER?
DO YOU THINK GOD HAS FORGOTTEN YOU AND LEFT YOU TO FEND ALONE,
OR DO YOU BELIEVE GOD IS STILL ALIVE AND STILL SITTING ON HIS THRONE?

3. David records his negative emotions as well as his positive emotions so that their is an honest balance in the picture he paints of the believer's life. It would be unrealistic if the Bible portrayed the believer's life as one big joyous high of love and faith, with no valley of doubt and fear to balance it out. David was just like all of us in that he had his downs as well as ups, and he actually expresses depths of depression and despair that most of us never experience. God is using David to cover the whole spectrum of human experience in order to leave no one out, however radical their emotional swings. However you may feel, there is a Bible verse somewhere to match it. If all that David wrote was just like the beginning verses of this Psalm, we could not find ourselves in it, and it would not have a message for us, for we just cannot live on the clouds and mountain tops with nothing but sunshine and roses. We may get there, but we cannot stay there. We would like to stay there and be like the disciples who went with Jesus to the Mount of Transfiguaration. It was so glorious that they wanted to build chapels there and stay there, but Jesus took them back down to a world of pain and suffering where they were confronted with their lack of power to change things. Jesus refused to give his disciples hope that they could live on the heights all the time. He sent them into a world of great need where they too would suffer a great deal in striving to meet those needs. If you are looking for a perpetual high, you wont find it in the Old or New Testament.

4. It is, no doubt, a major reason for depression to enter the believer's life when he or she does not get an answer to the prayer they have been praying for some time. Spurgeon wrote, "The voice which in the last verse was tuned to music is here turned to crying. As a good soldier, David knew how to handle his weapons, and found himself much at home with the weapon of "all prayer." Note his anxiety to be heard. Pharisees care not a fig for the Lord's hearing them, so long as they are heard of men, or charm their own pride with their sounding devotions; but with a genuine man, the Lord's ear is everything. The voice may be profitably used even in private prayer; for though it is unnecessary, it is often helpful, and aids in preventing distractions. Have mercy also upon me. Mercy is the hope of sinners and the refuge of saints. All acceptable petitioners dwell much upon this attribute. And answer me. We may expect answers to prayer, and should not be easy without them any more than we should be if we had written a letter to a friend upon important business, and had received no reply."

5. No answer to our prayer leads to anxiety, and sometimes to panic, in fear that it will never be answered. It is no comfort to say sometimes God says no, or wait, or forget it. We want an answer, and so we cry out for God to be merciful by giving us some meaningful answer, and not leave us hanging. Barnes wrote, "The phrase “when I cry with my voice” refers to the fact that he prayed audibly or aloud. It was not mental prayer, but that which found expression in the language of earnest entreaty." Calvin adds, "By the word cry, he expresses his vehemence, as I have elsewhere said, that he may thereby move God the sooner to help him. For the same purpose, also, he a little after mentions his misery, because the more the faithful are oppressed, the more does their very need induce God to extend his favor towards them."

6. What we have here is another aspect of temporal salvation. He has been saved in body from all his foes, and they have fallen by the way, and God has kept him safe and secure. Now he has another battle where he needs help, and that is in the realm of the mental rather than the physical. He needs salvation from his emotions that lead him to depression and doubt. Do believer's have doubt and depression? You bet they do, and they need saved from these pits that rob them of the joy of their salvation.

7. The mercy of God is what he appeals to, for he is not worthy of God's protection from all the troubles of life. He knows he deserves some hardships and negative feelings, but he cries out to God to be merciful, and not let him experience all that his sins deserve. He has experienced the mercy of God over and over, and he could have written this poem that comes to us from Annie Johnson Flint.

Yea, “new every morning,” though we may awake,
Our hearts with old sorrow beginning to ache;
With old work unfinished when night stayed our hand
With new duties waiting, unknown and unplanned;
With old care still pressing, to fret and to vex,
With new problems rising, our minds to perplex
In ways long familiar, in paths yet untrod,
Oh, new every morning the mercies of God!

His faithfulness fails not; it meets each new day
New guidance for every new step of the way;
New grace for new trials, new trust for old fears,
New patience for bearing the wrongs of the years,
New strength for new burdens, new courage for old,
New faith for whatever the day may unfold;
As fresh for each need as the dew on the sod;
Oh, new every morning the mercies of God!

8. Unfortunately, David woke up this morning and felt the lack of mercy, and that is why he is crying out for more of what he has been blest with so many mornings before. He actually did have the mercy of God every morning, for every day we are alive is due to the mercy of God, but we don't always feel it, and sometimes the basic mercies of God are not enough to comfort and strengthen us in particular battles we must fight. The everyday mercies of God are blessings to everyone, and we are to daily thank God for them, but they do not meet the specific needs we might have. Hebrews 4:16 says, "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." There are times when we need these two important things from God, which is his mercy and his grace. They are not automatic, and so we need to come to the throne of God pleading for them just as David is doing here.

9. Pink writes about the sudden reverses that can happen to believers. "For a time- perhaps for years-the smile of Providence is upon him, and then all is drastically altered. One trouble follows swiftly upon the heels of another, until the sorely tried soul is ready to say with Jacob, "all these things are against me" (Gen. 42:36). The strain of financial reverses and family bereavements undermines his health, and Satan takes full advantage of his low spirits and shattered nerves. Thoroughly dejected, he asks, "where are Thy former loving kindnesses?" (Psa. 89:49). " What "changes" the real Christian experiences in his faith! On some occasions his heart goes out instinctively to God so that he can exclaim, "I will trust and not be afraid" (Isa. 12:2); but at other times he is filled with doubts and fears, and is quite unable to lay hold of the Divine promises."

10. Crying out for the mercy of God is a paradox. It is wonderful that God is a God of mercy. In fact he delights in mercy as we see in Micah 7:18-19 "Who is a God like unto you, that pardons iniquity, and passes by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retains not his anger forever, because he delights in mercy. He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea." The paradox is that one has to feel guilty and condemned for his sinfulness to cry for mercy. In other words, one is caught in mixed emotions of sorrow for sin, and also gladness that there is a God who will forgive them. In the previous verse David is shouting and singing for joy, and now he is full of anxiety and gloom as he cries out for the mercy of God. The good news far outweighs the bad news of this Psalm, but the fact is, David has to experience the bad news as well as the good.

11. One thing, among many, that we have in common with God is that we also delight in mercy. We delight in mercy received, and God delights in mercy given. He gives and we receive, and everybody is happy with mercy. It is to be one of our greatest delights that God does not delight in judgment as he delights in mercy. Woe unto us if he had as much pleasure in judging sin as he has in forgiving it. Thank God that every person in history has the opportunity to pray, "God be merciful to me a sinner."

12. J. C. Philpot wrote, "God delights in mercy. It is not drawn from him unwillingly; it is not forced out of him even by importunity; it is not dragged out of his heart by the cries of his children; but he delights in it as being his darling attribute, the very pleasure of God being in showing mercy to the miserable. How hard it is for us to believe this until mercy visits the soul and a sweet sense of it is felt in the conscience. How we represent to ourselves God in his anger, in his justice, in his dreadful displeasure against sin and sinners; how unable to believe that there is mercy for us, and that he delights in manifesting mercy to poor, miserable, penitent sinners. Who ever would have thought of mercy unless it had first been in the bosom of God? Who could have ventured to entertain or suggest such a thought that "there is forgiveness with God;" that he can "pardon iniquity, and transgression, and sin;" that he can cast all our sins behind his back, and blot them out as a cloud, yes, as a thick cloud? This is what God has revealed of himself in his word, but it is only as mercy visits the troubled breast, and God displays his goodness and love in the revelation of his dear Son, that we can rise up into any sweet apprehension of what his mercy really is, and rejoice in it not only as suitable, but as saving."

13. This is a good place to study the mercy of God.

GOD IS MERCIFUL Based on Ps. 51:1

Dr. A. J. Cronin was raised in the strict tradition that if one did wrong they were to be punished. Justice demanded it. In 1921 he took the post of medical officer in an isolated district in Northumberland, England. He was young and inexperienced, but though trembling, he one night performed a tracheotomy on the throat of a small boy choking with diphtheria. He inserted the tube and gave a sigh of relief as the boy’s lungs filled with air. He then went to bed leaving the sick boy in the care of a nurse.

Some time in the night the tube filled with mucus and the boy began to choke. Instead of cleaning the tube, as any good nurse should have done, the boy girl fled in panic to get the doctor. When Dr. Cronin arrived the patient was dead. His anger blazed at such blundering negligence, and he decided right there he would ruin her career. He wrote a bitter letter to the County Health Board and read it to her with burning indignation. The 19 year old Welsh girl listened in silence half fainting with shame and misery. But finally she stammered, “Give me another chance.” He shook his head and sealed the envelope as she slipped away.

That night he could not sleep. Give me another chance kept echoing through his mind. Deep inside he knew he wanted to send that letter for revenge, and not because of his love for justice. When morning came the light of mercy came as well, and he tore up the letter. Twenty years later he wrote, “Today the nurse who erred so fatally is matron of the largest children’s home in Wales. Her career has been a model of service and devotion.”

Mercy, even on the human level, has saved many lives from being tragically wasted because of some sin, error, failure, or folly. None are so godlike as those who can exercise the virtue of mercy. In Shakespeare’s Merchant Of Venice old Shylock wants revenge through justice, but Portia disguised as a young lawyer pays her tribute to mercy and says, “It is an attribute of God Himself; and earthly power doth then show likest God’s when mercy seasons justice.” And then she says again, “Consider this-that in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation; we do pray for mercy; and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.”

Shakespeare not only understood the teaching of Christ that the merciful are blest, but he understood the truth that David learned as well; that mercy is the only hope for the guilty. There is no salvation for anyone in justice. Justice leaves us all condemned, but mercy opens the door of hope and gives us another chance. That is why David begins this great Psalm with a cry for God’s mercy. There is nowhere else to begin. God’s mercy is the only hope for the salvation of the sinner and the sanctification of the saint. If you take a concordance and look at all the references to the mercy of God, you will soon understand why Andrew Murray called it the greatest wonder of God’s nature. He wrote, “The omniscience of God is a wonder. The omnipotence of God is a wonder. God’s spotless holiness is a wonder. None of these things can we understand. But the greatest wonder of it all is the mercy of God. Mrs. Helen E. Hammond wrote,

The great celestial bodies are

Most marvelous and grand,

And how they keep their courses

Men cannot understand.

But something far more wonderful

Than stars that brightly glow

Is the mercy of the living God

To creatures here below.

The basic meaning of the words for mercy in the Bible are kindness, loving kindness, and graciousness. The Psalms deal so much with the mercy and loving kindness of God that the Jews have always made this theme a major aspect of their songs and prayers. In the 12th century the Jews in Spain sang a hymn on the Day of Atonement, and it sounds very much like the opening verse of this Psalm.

Lord, blot out our evil pride,

All our sins before thee;

Our Father, for Thy Mercy’s sake

Pardon, we implore Thee.

The Jews have always recognized that their hope is in God’s mercy, and over and over again they sang that the mercy of the Lord endures forever. Psa. 25:10 says, “All the paths of the Lord are mercy.” His mercy is not only everlasting, but it is also universal. Psa. 145:8-9 says, “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and His compassion is over all that he has made.” Both the Psalmist and the prophets explain God’s mercy by saying He is slow to anger. This is a very important thing to grasp to understand how God can be so merciful and still be a God of justice. The Bible makes it clear that in spite of God’s all-encompassing mercy He is also a God of judgment. How can the two be combined? It is all a matter of speed. His mercy moves swiftly and gives the sinner every chance to repent and be forgiven before His slow moving wrath ever reaches the sinner.

Spurgeon, in a sermon on Nah. 1:3, which says the Lord is slow to anger, explained it with these eloquent words: “When mercy cometh into the world, she driveth winged steeds; the axles of her chariot wheels are glowing hot with speed, but when wrath cometh, it walketh with tardy footsteps; it is not in haste to slay, it is not swift to condemn. God’s rod of mercy is ever in His hands outstretched; God sword of justice is in its scabbard, not rusted in it-it can be easily withdrawn-but held there by that hand that presses it back into its sheath crying,” sleep, O sword, sleep, for I will have mercy upon sinners, and will forgive their transgressions.”

God is not quick to destroy rebels, for he knows that many can be brought back to loyalty and allegiance. If He was speedy in His judgment, none would be saved. It is the combination of His swift mercy and slow justice that makes salvation possible. Because of this combination God’s judgment is never unfair. Mercy is always given first chance, but if mercy is rejected, then no one can complain when justice catches up and does its work.

All through history we see God gives a warning before His wrath falls. People were warned through Noah long before the flood came. Israel was warned in advance by the prophets before she faced judgment and captivity. Nineveh was warned by Jonah before God’s anger struck, and because they responded with repentance and cried out for mercy they were spared. When the warning is not heeded, however, and when the offer of mercy is not received, God, with all His loving kindness, cannot spare the sinner. Jesus said of the evil working Jezebel, who was destroying the church at Thyatira in Rev. 2:21, “I gave her time to repent, but she refused to repent of her immorality.” There was no alternative but judgment. We see that the Lord even spares the worse just as long as He can. He reverses the pattern of nature and sends the thunder of warning long before the lightening of judgment. Heaven is God’s will, and He is not willing that any should perish, but when mercy is refused then judgment is inevitable. Hell is the destiny men choose for themselves because they reject the mercy of God.

Mercy and justice are perfectly combined in God so that one or the other deals with all evil. Mercy is the alpha and justice is the omega. In our impatience we often wish God’s judgment was not so slow. Like Jonah we want God to destroy the wicked pagans before He gives them a warning and an offer of mercy. Mercy sometimes seems almost like a crime when it is offered to one that you think is deserving of wrath. David felt this way when the prophet Nathan told him of the rich man who took the poor man’s only lamb and killed it for his meal. David was not like God, but just the opposite. His sense of justice was swift, and he was ready to reek immediate vengeance on the wicked man. He only reverse his rush toward revenge when Nathan said, “Thou art the man.” David then realized that he was the scoundrel whose sin had made him so mad.

When he saw that he was the one under condemnation, then mercy became far more precious than justice. We tend to want justice for the other guy, but mercy for ourselves when we are the ones who are guilty. The truly godly man will learn to love mercy for everyone. God required that the godly man combined mercy with justice just as God combines it in His nature. Mic. 6:8 says, “He has showed you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” The degree to which we succeed in showing mercy and loving kindness determines much as to the mercy we receive from God. Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.” Someone wrote,

Teach me to feel another’s woe,

To hide the fault I see;

That mercy I to others show

That mercy show to me.

It is tragic but true what George Eliot wrote, “We hand folks over to God’s mercy and show none ourselves.” True godlike mercy is both a feeling and a matter of action. As an emotion mercy is the desire to pardon one who deserves punishment. It is that feeling parents get when their children do something so wrong that it deserves severe punishment, and yet there is a desire to pardon because they love their children. As an act of the will mercy is doing good for and forgiving one who deserves punishment. How many mothers have had children make a mess of something that called for a spanking, but who not only didn’t spank them, but in order to let them get in one something they have planned, even cleaned up the mess? That is mercy in action.

God does not sit in heaven with feelings of mercy, but He enters into history to act in mercy to get men to respond. Charles Finney in his Systematic Theology says of mercy, “It will employ the intelligence in devising means to serve the repentance of the sinner, and to remove all the obstacles out of the way¼” This is what made God give His Son, and His Son give His life while we were yet sinners. Mercy does not wait. It is ever busy seeking to save the lost. Finney says, “It is also this attitude that energized in prophets, and Apostles, and martyrs, and saints of every age, to secure the conversion of the lost in sin.”

As important as mercy is in God’s plan, and in the Christian life, it is a problem for most Christians. Life refuses to stay simple, and instead becomes complex, and this is so with the virtue of mercy. How do you prevent people from taking advantage of your mercy? People try and do this with the mercy of God, but we know they cannot fool Him. If men call upon God to forgive their sin, and then go and willfully engage in it again, they do not deceive God. The man who said, “I love to sin and God loves to forgive sin, and so we have an excellent relationship,” has no understanding of the mercy of God. As this Psalm makes clear, if there is no broken and contrite heart, then mercy is rejected. The proud sinner is not forgiven.

When we look at men’s attempt to imitate God in kindness and mercy, however, we see that it seems to give evil an advantage over the good. For example, a young boy was pushing a cart of goods up a steep hill and a stranger came along and helped him. When they got to the top the man got his breath and said indignantly, “Only a scoundrel would expect a youngster to do a job like that. Your employer must have known it was to heavy for you.” The boy said, “He did, but he said go ahead, your sure to find some old fool who will help you up the hill.”

Do-gooders and those who show kindness and mercy are often considered to be fools, for they let people take advantage of them. Evil men who do not respond to mercy only take advantage of it to continue their sin. Pardon the offender and they use their freedom to commit more offenses. There is also the sentiment expressed, “He that is merciful unto the bad is cruel to the good.” Total and absolute mercy seems to give evil a break, and so the Christian needs to learn to balance mercy and justice just as God does. Jesus said in Luke 6:36, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” Only as we understand the mercy of God can we obey the command to be merciful as He is, and then reap the rewards for doing so.

God hates sin more than any person, and His anger is to be feared. God’s attitude is that sin and evil must be overcome and conquered. By sheer power He could destroy them, but this would be inconsistent with His love and mercy. God’s primary goal is not to see that men are punished, but to see that they are saved. A bandit in Mexico was asked if he had any enemies, and he said that he had none because he had shot them all. God could have taken this approach also, but that is a mere victory of power, and not a victory for love.

God will punish the sinner, but before He does He seeks all possible ways to win the sinner, or the lost sheep, back to the fold. Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. This has ever been God’s program of mercy. One of the first questions of the Bible is God asking of Adam, “Where art thou?” From that point on the Bible is the story of a search. It is the search of God for all possible means to confront men with His mercy. God knows we are but dust. He knows the folly and sin of man, and the advantage they will try to take of His love, but yet it is true what the poet writes,

There is no place where earth’s sorrows

Are more felt than up in heaven.

There is no place where earth failings

Have more kindly judgment given.

God so loves His people, and all people, that even when He is forced to send judgment on them His primary thought is on how to restore them. When He falls out with man it is something like the attitude expressed in a cartoon. Two junior high girls were walking home from school when they saw Gregory on the other side of the street. One nudged the other and said excitedly, “There’s Gregory!” The other girl responded, “Oh, we’re not speaking anymore. I’ve lost all interest in him. We haven’t spoken for three days, six hours, and 23 minutes.” She may have been angry, but she counted the minutes until they were reconciled. So it is with God and man. In Isa. 54:7-8 God said to His people who had suffered His judgment-

“For a brief moment I forsook you,

But with great compassion I will gather you.

In overflowing wrath for a moment I hide my face from you,

But with everlasting love I will have compassion on you.”

God does not treat sin lightly, and so no one can make a fool of Him. He will judge and condemn, but He is ever seeking a way to reconcile a sinner and grant them a merciful part. The wicked man is welcome on his dying day to say yes to God’s mercy. A man fell from his horse and broke his neck. He cried out for God to forgive him before he died. These words were put on his tombstone: “Between the stirrup and the ground I mercy asked, I mercy found.” If we are going to be Godlike in mercy, then we must recognize that is does not mean we never judge or condemn sin, but it means that even when that is necessary we do not write off the offender, but do all we can to be reconciled.

There is always hope for the worst of men to respond to love. All of us are combinations of love and hate. We are like the girl who got mad and ran away from home. She left this note: “Dear mom, I hate you. I’m going away. Love, Linda.” The reason our conscience bothers us when we do wrong is because we really do love what is right. You hate it for bothering you, but it bothers you because you love it. The conscience is one of God’s agents of mercy. He made it to bother us when we do wrong so that we feel sad and in need of mercy, which He stands ready to give.

It was God’s mercy that brought David to the point where he cried out for mercy. The sinner cannot be forgiven until he prays, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” When he does so he does not gain any merit, for it is God’s mercy that makes him so pray. Some poet put it,

“I sought the Lord, and afterwards I knew

He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me;

‘Twas not so much that I on Thee took hold,

As Thou, dear Lord, on me.”

The hope of the world is not in justice, but it is in the mercy of God and the mercy of man for his fellow man. Memorial Day got its start in mercy, on an April morning in 1863 a group of women came to the cemetery in Columbus, Mississippi to dedicate the graves of their dead soldiers. The Civil War was still raging. One of the women placed flowers on the graves of her two sons, and then walked over to two mounds at the corner of the cemetery. One of the women asked what she was doing because those were graves of union soldiers. “I know,” she said. “I also know that somewhere up in the North, a mother or a young wife mourns for them as we do for ours.” She faced the other women and continued, “They are dead, our heroes of the South, and they are dead, these unknown soldiers of the North. All of them are lying here in our churchyard. When the war is over and peace comes, we shall call all of them heroes. We want someone to do this for our loved ones in nameless graves. We must do it for these in our cemetery.” She put flowers on the graves of these so-called enemies.

The story made its way to the New York Tribune, and then across the country. It was the beginning of the effort to replace hatred with love. In 1868 General Logan issued an order designating the 30th of May as a day to decorate the grave of all who had fallen in war. This Declaration Day became our present Memorial Day. It all began with the loving behavior of a mother and an act of mercy. We live in a world of so much evil and conflict. As Christians we need to be the salt of the earth and keep negative emotions from dominating the way people respond to all this evil and conflict. This can only be accomplished as we experience an express mercy.

Thomas Bardbury wrote, "I will sing of mercy and judgment," said the Psalmist, "unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing." (Ps. 101:1) And if some of us live until tomorrow we shall read, no doubt, that blessed new covenant psalm, the 89th, beginning with mercy, flowing with mercy, concluding with mercy, with mercy which never ends. See how mercy is extolled in that 136th Psalm. There at the end of every verse twenty-six times we find ourselves refreshed with mercy, delivered with mercy, preserved, with mercy, guided by mercy, remembered in mercy, redeemed with mercy, fed with mercy, overcome with mercy. "His mercy endureth for ever." I love to sing

"A debtor to mercy alone,
Of covenant mercy I sing,
Nor fear with Thy righteousness on,
My person and offerings to bring;

The terrors of law and of God
With me can have nothing to do;
My Saviour's obedience and blood
Hide all my transgressions from view."

For many long years Stocker's words have frequently warmed my heart

"Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart,
Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart;
Dissolved by Thy goodness I fall to the ground,
And weep to the praise of the mercy I found."

The mercy of God is seen so often in our lives by the answers to our prayers. That was the great mercy that David was seeking in his prayer. He desperately needed God to come to his rescue and save him, for in his own power he could not overcome all of the enemies that sought his life. Every one of us experience the mercy of God in our lives daily, for we are spared by his providence from all of the enemies of life that kill people daily. We are alive today by the mercy of God. You are reading this because God has spared you to do so. Thank God right now for answered prayer, and for his mercy in ways that you never even asked for.