Your cry has reached the courts of heaven, and the Lord has not turned away His ear. The promises you have set before your eyes, Psalm 27 and Isaiah 49, are the very words of our tender God, who does not forget the abandoned, the fatherless, the motherless, the little ones whom man despises. Though a woman may forget her nursing child, yet the Lord cannot forget. And though you say you are a beggar seeking shelter or mercy even in a madhouse, know that the mercy of God is not confined by walls nor limited by the depth of human sorrow.
The mercy of God is a sovereign and free mercy. It cometh, like the Angel did to Hagar in the wilderness, to the soul that is sitting by a well of tears in the desert of despair. She had no personal claim, no goodness to plead; she had fled from her mistress, and she was alone and cast out. Yet the Lord found her, called her by name, and gave her a promise. So it is with you. You feel your need of mercy, that is the first sound step. A true hope in mercy knows that it is mercy alone, clean divorced from any confidence in self. If you are empty, then mercy can fill you; if you are lost, then mercy can find you.
There is a Refuge set before you, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who came into the world to seek and to save that which was lost. He is the City of Refuge, and His gates stand wide open today. At every crossroad, the sign reads “Refuge!” and He bids you flee to Him without delay. He is the Great Messenger of the Covenant, who can make a sinner feel the way of salvation as well as know it. He can shed abroad a sweet sense of mercy in your heart, and lead you to accept it as well as to understand it.
That mercy is most tender. It stoops to the lowest, to the very outcasts of society. When the gates of man’s pity are shut, the gates of God’s mercy are not shut. Jesus walks into the colony of the leprous and the lost and says, “Be thou clean.” What, then, shall we say of those helpless babes, the unborn, despised and murdered by the very ones who should have sheltered them? God’s mercy is able to receive them into the arms of everlasting love. They are safe in the hollow of His hand, for the Lord Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.” Their blood cries out, but the Blood of Jesus speaks better things than that of Abel. Justice may draw the sword, but mercy has put her hand upon the hilt and pressed it back into its sheath, crying, “Sleep, O sword, sleep! For I will have mercy.”
Yet for you who are still breathing the air of time, I must speak plainly. A false hope in mercy is a terrible snare. There are those who say, “God is merciful,” and yet they continue in sin, never born again, never turned from their own way. The first thing mercy does for a sinner is to turn his face in an opposite direction. If mercy ever come to you, it will make you a new creation, give you new loves, new hates. But flee now, while the door stands open. The errand of mercy is to the lost, not to the self-righteous. You confess yourself abandoned, broken, in need of refuge, then you are the very one mercy seeks. Do not postpone your coming. The mercy of God often goes before our prayers; while we are yet speaking, He hears. This very hour may be the singular season of His interposition. Cast yourself at the feet of Jesus. Say, “My substitute, my refuge, my shield; Thou art my rock, my trust.” Then you shall find that He is slow to anger and plenteous in mercy, and that His tender mercy is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him. Dear soul, flee to Jesus now. His arms are stretched wide to embrace the forsaken. In Him there is a home for the homeless, a Father for the fatherless, a shelter from the storm. May the Holy Spirit drive you thither, and you shall sing with the Psalmist, “The God of my mercy shall go before me.”