---

After considering our own miserable and guilty state, and how little any plea which we can offer will avail before the holiness and justice of God, it is proper to turn our eyes to His mercy, as the only foundation of our hope and peace.

I. GIVE A BRIEF VIEW OF THE DISCOVERIES WHICH GOD HATH MADE OF HIS MERCY, AS THE FOUNDATION OF THE SINNER'S HOPE; or, in other words, show what reason we have to believe that there is forgiveness with Him.

1. The patience and forbearance of God towards sinners, in the course of His providence, is the effect of His mercy. Even this affords some faint hope that there may be forgiveness with Him (Jonah 4:2). We may add to this His continual benignity and kindness to all His creatures, not excepting the evil, the unthankful, and the unholy. The native tendency of both these is to lead the guilty to repentance, as we are told (Romans 2:4).

2. God hath revealed Himself in His Word, as merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and slow to anger (Exodus 34:5-7; Psalm 103:8; Micah 7:18; Isaiah 1:18; Isaiah 43:25; Isaiah 55:1, 6, 7; Malachi 3:17).

3. But that nothing may be wanting for the complete illustration of this truth, observe that it appears in the clearest manner from the Gospel of Christ that there is forgiveness with God (John 3:16; 1 Peter 1:18; Hebrews 6:18).

II. POINT OUT THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE MERCY OF GOD AND HIS FEAR.

1. A discovery of the mercy of God is absolutely necessary to His being loved and served by those who have once been sinners. There can be no religion at all, either in inclination or performance, if there be no forgiveness with God. How should any so much as attempt what they believe to be an unprofitable labour?

2. As a discovery of the mercy of God is absolutely necessary to our serving Him at all, so it is perhaps of all others the most powerful motive to induce us to serve Him in sincerity. Nothing whatever more illustrates the Divine glory. It presents Him as the proper object of worship, of confidence, and of love.

3. But, further, even taking fear in a more limited sense, as signifying a holy reverence and dread of the power and majesty of God, there being forgiveness with Him, is so far from weakening, that it strengthens this fear; and that on the two following accounts.

(1) The infinite obligations we lie under to Divine mercy must serve to improve our sense of the evil of sin, as committed against so good and so gracious a God, and to increase our abhorrence of it.

(2) Forgiveness with God tends to increase our fear and reverence of Him, from the manner in which, and the condition on which, it is bestowed. Every circumstance of this dispensation of Divine mercy is calculated to abase the sinner, and leave him nothing whereof to glory before God.

III. PRACTICAL IMPROVEMENT.

1. Learn that none can understand, embrace, or esteem the mercy of God, but those who are convinced of their sin and misery.

2. Observe that the publication of Divine mercy, that the illustration of the riches of Divine graze in the Gospel, hath not the least tendency to lessen our sense of the evil of sin, or the obligation we lie under to obedience: on the contrary, it serves greatly to improve both the one and the other.

3. See the difference between a real and Scriptural discovery of forgiveness with God, and that careless security which arises from a presumptuous reliance on His general mercy. The one prevents conviction, the other produces it.

4. See of how much moment it is to the Christian to keep clear views of the mercy of God, as well as of His own interest in it. The moment he loses the comfortable sense of peace with God, his chariot-wheels are troubled, and he drives heavily. It makes his duty burdensome, and his trials insupportable.

5. See in what way you may most effectually, and most certainly, preserve your peace with God, viz. by the frequent exercise of penitence and confession.

(J. Witherspoon, D. D.)

---

---

KJV: But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.

WEB: But there is forgiveness with you, therefore you are feared.