Remember, O Lord, Your compassion and Your lovingkindnesses,
For they have been from of old.
Psalms 25:6

Do you remember the last sunrise you saw? Do you remember the certainty of it all? Do you remember what it meant, a light dawning, a fresh start, a reset, a break from the heat, a moment of perfection before you have time to mess everything up? The morning is the underlying calm and foundation of every day. All that is there carries forward under the clatter and clutter of the day.

Now, imagine a sunrise in heaven if that is even possible, but imagine one nonetheless. Multiply all these qualities by a trillion. This is a taste of God’s great compassion and lovingkindness.

Remember…from of old. Every morning quickly moves into the past and is forgotten by us, but the Psalmist calls upon God to go back and remember the morning of His day, the perfection of that day, the beauty of that day, the glory of that day, before man corrupted it and tainted it and marred it. Bring that pure day forward, David pleads, and cover me. According to the next verse, Psalms 25:6, he seeks to erase all his blemishes. Is the foundation of his desire this tender mercy found in God?

These ideas were derived after contemplating the meaning of verse 78 which also speaks of these mercies of God (compassion and lovingkindnesses).

Luke 1:76-78

The Sunrise from on high shall visit us. What a glorious fresh start that will be! I am lost in wonder, love and praise!

The following is taken directly from The Treasury of David by Spurgeon.

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EXPOSITION

Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses. We are usually tempted in seasons of affliction to fear that our God has forgotten us, or forgotten his usual kindness towards us; hence the soul doth as it were put the Lord in remembrance, and beseech him to recollect those deeds of love which once he wrought towards it. There is a holy boldness which ventures thus to deal with the Most High, let us cultivate it; but there is also an unholy unbelief which suggests our fears, let us strive against it with all our might. What gems are those two expressions, “tender mercies and lovingkindnesses!” They are the virgin honey of language; for sweetness no words can excel them; but as for the gracious favours which are intended by them, language fails to describe them.

“When all thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, I am lost
In wonder, love and praise.”

If the Lord will only do unto us in the future as in the past, we shall be well content. We seek no change in the divine action, we only crave that the river of grace may never cease to flow.

For they have been ever of old. A more correct translation would be “from eternity.” David was a sound believer in the doctrine of God’s eternal love. The Lord’s lovingkindnesses are no novelties. When we plead with him to bestow them upon us, we can urge use and custom of the most ancient kind. In courts of law men make much of precedents, and we may plead them at the throne of grace. “Faith,” saith Dickson, “must make use of experiences and read them over unto God, out of the register of a sanctified memory, as a recorder to him who cannot forget.” With a unchangeable God it is a most effectual argument to remind him of his ancient mercies and his eternal love. By tracing all that we enjoy to the fountain head of everlasting love we shall greatly cheer our hearts, and those do us but sorry service who try to dissuade us from meditating upon election and its kindred topics.

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Thy tender mercies. O how does one deep call upon another! The depths of my multiplied miseries, calls, loudly calls, upon the depth of thy manifold mercies; even that mercy whereby thou dost pardon my sin and help mine infirmities; that mercy whereby thou dost sanctify me by thy grace, and comfort me by thy Spirit; that mercy whereby thou dost deliver me from hell, and possess me of heaven. Remember, O Lord, all those thy mercies, thy tender mercies, which have been of old unto thy saints. — Robert Mossom.

Thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses…have been ever of old. Let the ancientness of divine love draw up our hearts to a very dear and honourable esteem of it. Pieces of antiquity, though of base metal, and otherwise of little use or value, how venerable are they with learned men! and ancient charters, how careful are men to preserve them; although they contain but temporary privileges, and sometimes but of trivial moment! How then should the great charter of heaven, so much older than the world, be had in everlasting remembrance, and the thoughts thereof be very precious to us; lying down, rising up, and all the day long accompanying of us! …That which is from everlasting shall be to everlasting; if the root be eternal, so are the branches …Divine love is an eternal fountain that never leaves running while a vessel is empty or capable of holding more; and it stands open to all comers: therefore, come; and if ye have not sufficient of your own, go and borrow vessels, empty vessels, not a few; “pay your debts out of it, and live on the rest” 2 Kings 4:7, to eternity. — Elisha Coles on “God’s Sovereignty“, 1678.

HINTS TO THE VILLAGE PREACHER

The antiquity of mercy.

Ver. 6-7. The Three Remembers.