Note:
I. The character here given to God: "The Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy." (1) "Pitiful." Pity is a feeling for, a feeling with, the distressed. The pity of God is of high quality and eminent degree. (2) "Of tender mercy." It is kindness to the sinful, to the guilty and undeserving and ill-deserving. Tendermercy is mercy easily excited, not like a flow of water produced by machinery, but like a stream of water from a spring or well. The merciful Father is of tender mercy,and the tenderness of that mercy has notbeen produced by Christ; it is, on the other hand, expressed and manifested by Christ.
II. The character manifested. Observe the unfolding of this beauteous and glorious character. God has a purpose in all the afflictions of His saints, which when developed reveals God as very pitiful and of tender mercy. (1) Here, then, is something to believe. (2) Here is something to be ultimately seen: the end of the Lord. To be seen, there is the coming out of tribulation; to be seen, the being better and more happy for that tribulation; the comparison between the sufferings of the present time and the glory revealed; the light and transient appearance of affliction when in conjunction with an eternal weight of glory; the high purpose and supreme wisdom of God in the suffering of affliction; the end seen to be better than the beginning; and God proved, demonstrated, to be "very pitiful and of tender mercy."
S. Martin, Comfort in Trouble,p. 28.