I. In the mind of the psalmists there was nothing contradictory between faith in God as a righteous Judge and faith in God as being longsuffering and of great kindness. They did not think of God as divided between His sense of justice and His love of mercy, because they understood that mercy was never forgotten in His judgments. They felt that His judgments were the truest mercies both for themselves and for the world at large. So deep was their conviction of the blessedness of God's judgments that some of their most joyous strains are those in which they proclaim God as coming to judge the world in righteousness.
II. The text shows the fatherly character of God. He is our Father because He created and preserves us; He is our Father because He rules us by the stern yet loving discipline of His righteous judgment; He is our Father because He is full of love, and forgiveness, and tender, fatherly pity, knowing our frame and remembering that we are dust.
III. Here then is a proof of the Divine source whence the inspirations of the psalmists came. They knew God as their Father because the Spirit of adoption was speaking to their hearts.
G. Forbes, The Voice of God in the Psalms,p. 149.
References: Psalms 103:11. Sermons for Sundays, Festivals, and Fasts,1st series, p. 292.Psalms 103:12. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xix., No. 1108.
(with Hebrews 2:17; Hebrews 4:15)
The thought which I desire, by the comparison of these texts, to suggest is this: how the compassion of God for men disclosed in the Old Testament has grown in the New into the fellow-feeling of Christ. We have not lost our Father's pity; we have gained a Brother's sympathy.
I. Both halves of revelation agree in giving impartial prominence to two aspects of God's moral attitude towards us: to His aspect of displeasure towards the sinner as identified with his sin and His aspect of grace towards the sinner as separable from his sin. But looking only to the gracious or favourable side of the Divine character, I am struck by this, that in those Old Testament writings which make most of the kindlier and milder attributes of Jehovah the grand quality on which everything is made to rest is His pity. The inconceivable vastness of that interval which divides God from men was ever present to the devout Hebrew. It was across this gulf of contrast that Hebrew piety always represented Jehovah as regarding man. He beheld them creatures of yesterday, small, and frail, and evil, evanescent and sorrowful. He pitied them. Very beautiful to think of is this tender turning of the great Divine heart toward such as we are, and the waking up of pity at each new sight of our pitiable mood. Whatever the Old Testament discloses of Divine kindness to men, of gentle forbearance, and enduring, watchful care, and abundant forgiveness, and healing helpfulness, seems all of it to be the condescension of One who is too great to be anything else than nobly pitiful.
II. There is no doubt whatever that some souls, fed on such views of God as these, did grow up to a spiritual stature quite heroical. True greatness of soul is near of kin to a manly lowliness of soul, and he who frankly and profoundly worships Him who is alone noble enough for worship will find himself ennobled.
III. At the same time, the characteristic tendency of Old Testament saints to look at the Divine goodness as coloured by His pity, and as having a constant reference to His distance above His creatures, implied an imperfect appreciation of His love. Love has not done its best when from above it pities us who are below. One better thing it had to do; and at last, when the world was ripe to bear it, love came and did it. Love when it is perfect vanquishes what it cannot obliterate: the distinctions of high and low, of great and small. It refuses to be separated from its loved one. Down from His height of serene, compassionate Divinity, therefore, love drew the Eternal Son of God, to become a Brother of the men whose Father He was. God has entered into a new relation to humanity. He has, what once He had not, a fellow-feeling, that fellow-feeling which springs from the touch of kinship. In brief, to the paternity of God has been added the fraternal tie.
IV. There are three directions in which actual experience must be held to modify even the compassions of the Most Merciful. (1) It gives such knowledge of every similar sufferer's case as no mere spectator can have. (2) By His incarnation Christ has put Himself on our own level. He has abolished at His own choice the gulf which parted us. He is our Equal; He is our Fellow. (3) A chord which has been once set in unison with another vibrates, they say, when its fellow is sharply struck. God has set His heart through human suffering into perpetual concord with human hearts. Strike them, and the heart of God quivers for fellowship. It is the remembrance of His own human past which stirs within the soul of Christ when, now from His high seat, He sees what mortal men endure. An echo from an unforgotten passion answers back to all the cries and sighs that go daily up from men and women who to this hour on earth must toil, and weep, and pray, and agonise, and die.
J. Oswald Dykes, Sermons,p. 138.
I. Jesus made Deity attractive. He presented Him in such a fashion that human love humanly expressed could give itself to Him. The incarnation of God translated theology out of metaphysics into the physical, brought the apprehension of it within the scope of those senses that feed the soul. Pity, tenderness, courtesy of manner, sweetness of speech, patience, bravery, humility, faith, hope these in Jesus were revealed as Divine, as God in the flesh, as Deity brought nigh.
II. There is nothing so fine in its influence or so sweet in its expression as the authority of love. We yielded loving obedience to it when we were children, as we heard its words from the mouth of mother and father. We never doubted their right to speak it. We never thought it was unnecessary. No more should we when God commands us. God is father and mother to us. His commands are wishes in our behalf, suggestions to us, entreaties, prayers, and whatever else is natural for love to feel and do for those it calls its own. This idea of the commands of God gives the mind a right standpoint from which to see the face and to hear the advice of that heavenly Fatherhood which is over us all in its solicitude, anxiety, and deathless love.
III. In the future we shall grow into this love as trees grow to their leaves and their blossoms. We are human now, but we are learning to be Divine. The creeds may not help us; but the loving and the forgiving, the bearing and the fighting, the weeping and the laughing, will. Our day will come after night, and our calm after storm. We are men and women now; we shall be angels by-and-bye: and what are angels but men fully grown and women to whom all possible whiteness and sweetness has come? Our Father will give us new names when we are grown enough to look like Him.
W. H. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit,p. 397.
I. Upon the three grounds of creation, property, and unity we base the parental tenderness of God. And if once that fact be established, there are two things which become impossible for ever. (1) The one impossibility is that God should ever feel contempt for us. Pity is a respectful feeling; real pity never despises: it always acts delicately. (2) The other impossibility is that God should ever feel any unkindness towards us.
II. Notice one or two of the characteristic features which mark a father. (1) Anticipation. We have an amazing history yet to learn of what has been the anticipatory character of God's love to us. (2) Patience. Of all the marvels of God, the greatest marvel is His longsuffering. If you ask the secret of this wonderful endurance of God, how it is that He has borne all the insults and all the irritation which we all have been continually giving Him, the answer lies in the deep principle of parental character. (3) God's pity is not a weak pity; it is not a morbid pity; it is not a pity that cannot punish. He does punish His own children; in this world He punishes them more severely than other men.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,9th series, p. 186.
References: Psalms 103:13. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii., No. 1650; J. Baillie, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 230.