Let thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live:
for thy law is my delight (Psa 119.77).
The Bible’s clear teaching about God’s compassion is diametrically opposed to what we initially assume about it because we tend to think he is as we naturally wish him to be—one like ourselves only better—and that his ways must and would meet with our approval (Psa 50.21; Isa 55.8-9). Yet when by his self-disclosure and grace we apprehend his true, exalted, and glorious nature, and when we begin to appreciate his holy ways (expressions of his true self), we also realize to our shame that our former thoughts were totally unworthy of him and that he is far greater and more wonderful than we ever could have imagined (Job 42.5-6; Eph 3.20).
Until God grants such faith, the truth in many particulars about him remains offensive to us, even truth about his tender mercies.
This psalm verse is a prayer which implies and tersely states some shocking truths about God’s tender mercies—truths which are loved and prized by real Christians. The original Hebrew for this main subject comes from a root which means “deep love,” and in this form has the sense of affection and tenderness, especially of God towards men as helpless, wretched, sinful, and deserving of punishment.1 It is the direct opposite of “the fierceness of his anger” (Deut 13.17). His tender mercies are comparable to the kind of feelings a mother has for her little baby (1 Kgs 3.26). The Lord’s tender mercies are “great” like himself (Psa 119.156; 147.5); they actually save those to whom they are given (Neh 9.27-28).
Already these few biblical references begin to overturn the conventional wisdom of universalism (God is compassionate to all people alike—radical egalitarianism) and presumption (his mercies are ours regardless of anything we do or fail to do). Our psalm text exposes these errors and two more besides: self-sufficiency (we don’t really need God after all) and apathy toward Scripture (God is not so petty as to care whether you even read, much less believe, the Bible). When the rubbish of our confusion is cleared away by the substance of God’s truth, we can relate to him as we should and experience his tender mercies as never before.
HIS TO GIVE OR WITHHOLD
God’s tender mercies are his own, and he gives or withholds them according to his sovereign pleasure. The psalmist confesses to the Lord that they are “thy tender mercies” of which the one praying was in desperate need. If ever he would possess them, they must “come unto” him or “reach” him (Tanakh). Here is a spatial metaphor.
The Lord is in heaven with his tender mercies. When he is pleased to see anyone saved, he acts on their behalf to save them, and this is as if he sends on a mission his tender mercies from heaven to earth to that particular person or those particular people he wishes to save.
No small part of God’s unique glory is that he remains in complete control of the distribution of his mercies. Contrariwise, he hardens whom he will in their sins (Exod 33.18-19; cf. Rom 9.15-18). He chose and prepared beforehand vessels to fill with his mercy instead of his wrath; i.e., he predestinated them to salvation (Rom 9.23; Eph 1.4-5). Though generally despised, these truths are a matter of unequivocal biblical record.
GRANTED THROUGH PRAYER
“Let thy tender mercies come unto me” is the psalmist’s prayer that he in particular might experience and continue experiencing the Lord’s tender mercies, and such petitions are never in vain when made in faith. Indeed, it was the Lord’s tender mercies already at work in the psalmist which were the ultimate cause of his desire for and practice of prayer (Phil 2.13). Those whom God intends to save he also moves to pray in faith for salvation, since he generally works by means and his glory is more conspicuous when he answers prayer.
Sometimes people respond to the message of God’s absolute sovereignty by complaining that it obliterates the need for us to pray or to do anything at all, since God is resolved to do everything he has decreed anyway, but this cavil is wicked nonsense.
In any religious duty, we must tend to our responsibility and not seek refuge from it in a doctrine of divine providence. Prayer is a moral duty; that consideration by itself is enough to move the godly to engage in it and to condemn the wicked for neglecting it or saying prayers without heart. No one who refuses to beg God for his tender mercies will have any right to complain on Judgment Day when those mercies are completely withheld!
Besides, when we have the grace from God to cry out for his tender mercies, we should be much encouraged to anticipate those same mercies, for why would he so move us to pray if he did not also intend to give us the things for which he moved us to plead? Only the farmer who plants and tends a crop may reasonably hope for a harvest, and as a rule, he eventually enjoys one.
Both here and many other places of Scripture we read that the godly supplicate the Lord for mercy. “Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses; for they have been ever of
old” (Psa 25.6). “Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, O LORD: let thy lovingkindness and thy truth continually preserve me” (Psa 40.11).
“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions” (Psa 51.1). “And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18.13). So Christians ought to persevere in prayer for God’s tender mercies; this is not only a once-in-a-lifetime prayer at conversion.
I urge you trembling souls, then, who fear falling short of God’s tender mercies, to take heart in this good news: God delights to hear and answer such prayers! In a passage explicitly evangelistic, the apostle Paul by the Spirit announced, “There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom 10.12-13). You may doubt now whether God really will keep this huge promise, but eternity will parade his faithfulness in this and every other gospel proclamation, even toward those who only had faith like a tiny mustard seed.
THE FOUNDATION OF EVERY BLESSING
The psalmist was prompted to pray for heaven’s tender mercies because he knew that everything would ultimately be well with him when he had them. “Let thy tender mercies come unto me, that I may live.” As “death” is emblematic of all the ruinous consequences of sin (Gen 2.17), so “life” is shorthand for all the blessed effects of the Lord’s tender mercies toward his people (Psa 133.3; John 3.16; 17.2-3; cf. Deut 30.15, 19; Rom 6.23; etc.). Everyone is destined for either death or life depending upon whether God grants his tender mercies.
Therefore, we interpret this verse crassly if we think that the psalmist is merely praying before some earthly danger to escape physical death.
Rather, he pleads that he might enjoy forever all the blessings which flow from the exercise of God’s compassion toward the ungodly. God’s blessing was everything to him. “He declares that when he did not feel God’s mercies, he was as dead” (1599 Geneva Bible notes). Therefore more than anything else, he prayed for that mercy which leads to eternal life.
THE DESTINY OF BELIEVERS ALONE
The second line of our text says, “for thy law is my delight,” and it is important to ascertain its connection with the first line. As two scholars say,
He urges as a plea of fitness in his petition that he is no hypocrite, but has real and abundant pleasure in the word of God.2
This is urged here as a reason for the divine interposition. The meaning is, that he was a friend of God; that he had pleasure in his service and in his commandments; and that he might, therefore, with propriety, appeal to God to interpose in his behalf. This is a proper ground of appeal to God in our prayers, not on the ground of merit or claim, but because we may reasonably suppose that God will be disposed to protect his friends, and to deliver them in the day of trouble.3
One of the first marks of saving grace in one’s heart is a new-found delight in hearing the words of the Lord. Scripture, which is objectively a living word in itself, becomes subjectively alive to us.
Those who are born again really do have ears to hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The instruction of Scripture is no dead letter to us but rather God’s voice guiding us out of the broad way of destruction into the narrow way that leads to life—Christ Himself (John 14.6). We gladly meditate therefore on the word of God day and night both as our happy duty and as our recreation for the refreshment of our souls, and we discover we are like well-watered trees bearing fruit (Psa 1.2-3).
This affinity for God’s Word, this trust in his written message, is his forerunner announcing our everlasting happiness through grace. The Lord has already begun giving us his tender mercies by changing our hearts toward him, and so we Bible-lovers can confidently expect the consummation of his tender mercies toward us in the future. Believing his Word, we shall be saved.
Once you embrace the Lord and the truth about his tender mercies, it becomes increasingly harder to sympathize with unbelievers who are so offended. We, too, had cut ourselves off from our own salvation, but now God’s tender mercies have come to us and we are glad! Amen.
Notes:
1 Gesenius’ Hebrew and English Lexicon, p. 975.
2 Plumer, in loc.
3 Barnes, in loc.