As we come to the psalm, we want to just mention a couple of things about the psalm. First of all, the psalm was written by David. David was the author, we know, of many of the psalms, not all of the psalms, but he was the author of many of them and he was the author of this psalm. The second thing to mention as we come to it is that this psalm naturally breaks into three sections. In the first four verses we have the first section of the psalm and it speaks there of the godless man. You'll see it in verse 1. that it refers to a man who is obviously a godless man. Verse 1 says, The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart that there is no fear of God before his eyes. For he flattereth himself in his own eyes until his iniquity be found to be hateful. The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit. He hath left off to be wise and to do good. He deviseth mischief upon his head. He setteth himself in a way that is not good. He abhorreth not evil. So quite obviously, the first four verses of this psalm, it's referring to the godless man. The word transgression is used, the word iniquity, the word deceit, mischief, all of these things, all of them not good. And these four opening verses of the psalm surely remind us of all that we are in ourselves. We are by nature sinners. We are sinners by birth. And we have to have the sin question in our lives dealt with. And the sin question in our lives is not dealt with by the church. It's not dealt with by turning over a new leaf. It's only dealt with by God Himself in the person of His Son when we repent of our sins, when we turn to Him. So we have in these first four verses of the psalm the godless man. But if we skip away down to verse 8 in the psalm, we find in the last five verses not the godless man, but here we have the godly. It speaks from Verse 8 onwards of those who are satisfied with God, of those who find their pleasures in Him, of those who are upright in heart. And what a contrast there is between the person in the first four verses of the psalm and the person in the last few verses of the psalm. Verse 8 says, They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness or the fullness of thy house. and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. For with thee is the fountain of life. In thy light we shall see light. O, continue thy lovingkindness unto them that know thee, and thy righteousness to the upright in heart." So this is a person who knows God. This is a person who is upright in heart. This is the godly man. But in between the godless man in the first four verses and the godly man in the last five verses, we have the three verses that we want to consider this morning. Three verses that speak of God himself. And he is the one who makes the difference in our lives. He is the one who makes the difference between the godless man in the first few verses and the godly man in the last few verses of the psalm. God himself is the one who turns the godless man into the godly man. He is the one who turns the rebellious to the righteous. The one who turns sinners to saints. Look at these three verses this morning. Beginning at verse 5, as it speaks of God Himself. Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains. Thy judgments are a great deep. O Lord, thou preservest man and beast. How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings." You'll notice that reference is made in these three verses to the heavens, the clouds, the mountains and the sea. And we want to centre our thoughts upon these three verses and these wonderful comparisons that are made in the middle of this psalm that speak to us of our God and describe to us what He really is like. And what a wonderful description we have here of Him. What a wonderful description we have here of our God. The God of the Bible and the God who lives and reigns. The heavens, the clouds, the mountains and the sea are four great images brought before us here in this wonderful psalm. Verse 5 again says, By mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens. Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains. Thy judgments are a great deep, or like the depths of the sea. O Lord, Thou preservest man and beast. How excellent is Thy lovingkindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings. Very simply, these few verses tell us that our God is a God of mercy. They tell us that He is a God of faithfulness. They tell us that He is a God who is a God of righteousness and a God who exercises judgment and also that He is a God of love. And as David, the writer of this psalm, tries to find a comparison for each of these attributes of God, His mercy, his faithfulness, his righteousness, his judgment and then his love. He goes to the world of nature and he compares each of these things to something that is readily available in our minds to each and every one of us. He thinks of God's mercy and his mind goes to the heavens. The heavens where the stars are. The heavens where the moon is. The heavens where the sun rolls around all day long and he says, God's mercy, it's in the heavens. And then he thinks of God's faithfulness and his mind goes to the clouds, the clouds that float across the sky. And as he thinks of God's faithfulness, he says, God's faithfulness, it reaches to the clouds. And then he thinks of God's righteousness. And where does his mind go? His mind goes to the great mountains. So high, so firm, so solid. And he thinks, the righteousness of God, it's like the great mountains. And then when he thinks of the judgments of God, He thinks of the sea, its depths so deep that nobody could ever go there. And he thinks the judgments of God are like the depths of the sea. We want to consider something for a little while just now about each of these attributes of God as we find them here in this wonderful psalm. The first of them is, of course, the mercy of God. And we all have some idea of what mercy is. Mercy is the act of giving help to another person. Men perform acts of mercy. They give help to others at times of great need, whenever great need hits the world, in times of great natural disasters in this part of the world. In Western civilization, we send help out to those who are in need. It's described as an act of mercy. And the mercy of God, what is it? The mercy of God is His, sending out help to us in all our need. It's according to His mercy that He saves us. And what a wonderful act of mercy it is. when a soul is saved from sin and brought nigh to God. And when David looked up at the sky, when David looked up at the heavens, the height of the heavens surely reminded him of the mercy of God. A man who lived a long time ago, one of Job's so-called friends. He said in the book of Job, at Job 22, verse 12, Is not God in the height of heaven? Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold, the height of the stars, how high they are. Now, he wasn't much of a friend to Job. Not much of a friend to Job at all. But in those words, he spoke a wonderful truth. He said, Look how high the heavens are. Look how high the stars are. How high are the heavens? That's a tough question. Airplanes fly at 30,000 feet, that's six miles high. When you look this afternoon up into the sky and you see a plane flying across the sky, one of the transatlantic planes, One of the planes flying from some part of Europe across to the United States of America. It's flying at 30,000 feet. It's flying six miles high. But the heavens, they're higher than that. Whatever height the heavens are, whatever height the heavens are, the Bible says, as the heaven is high above the earth, So great is His mercy towards them that fear Him. This is great mercy. This is enormous mercy. This is massive mercy. This is mercy of enormous proportions, the mercy of God to poor sinners like you and poor sinners like me. But not only does the height of the heavens remind us of the mercy of God, the expanse of the heavens. It reminds us of the mercy of God as well. There's times when we stand in the evening and we watch the greatest show that the world has ever seen. We look up at the sky and we try to take in the height of it. We try to take in the breadth of it. We look up into the sky and we try to imagine the dimensions of the thing. We try to to imagine the breadth of it. And as we do, as we look up at the sky and take in that vast semicircle or circle of space, our eyes take in vast, vast distances. There was a series of programs on television a number of months ago They were televised on a Sunday evening and for a couple of reasons that I can think of, I didn't see them and I'm sure some of you didn't see them either. But they looked like a very interesting series of programs and I saw the trailer for them and managed to catch a little bit of them at a later stage. But on those programs entitled The Wonders of the Universe, the presenter of the programs was a scientist that seemed like a very good presenter. seemed like quite a nice person. And on the program, he talked about the wonders of the universe. He seemed to be amazed by the whole thing. There were long shots of him standing, gazing in wonder with a little smile upon his face at the wonders of the universe. But what a pity it was that in all of his studying of the universe, And in all of his research, as he gazed with wonder on the universe, he never saw God. Never saw God in any of it. Just saw the universe. Just saw the stars and just referred to evolution as if evolution was God. He didn't see God anywhere. He didn't see God in any of it. But as a man in this salve, stands and looks up at the heavens. And as I stand and look up at the heavens, and I'm sure as most of you stand and look up at the heavens as well, we see the handiwork of God and we see the mercy of God as well. The height of the heavens. The expanse of the heavens. It reminds us of the mercy of God. It goes on and on. and on. And so does God's mercy, for the Scripture says, His mercy endureth forever. Indeed, in another one of the Psalms, in Psalm 136, add 100 on to the Psalm that we're looking at this morning, those words are repeated over and over again. The psalmist says there, O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good. For his mercy endureth forever. O give thanks unto the God of gods, for his mercy endureth forever. O give thanks unto the Lord of lords, for his mercy endureth forever. To him who alone doeth great wonders, for his mercy endureth forever. Listen to these words. To Him who by wisdom made the heavens, for His mercy endureth forever. To Him that stretched out the earth above the waters, for His mercy endureth forever. To Him that made great lights, for His mercy endureth forever. The sun to rule by day, for His mercy endureth forever. The moon and the stars to rule by night, for His mercy endureth forever. His mercy, it's in the heavens. And His mercy, it endures forever. You see, with men, mercy is something that can be given at a certain time and then can be taken away at another time. A dictator, he might choose to be merciful one day and then the next day wake up in a bad mood and withdraw that mercy just because he was in a bad mood. But not God. Not God. His mercy is in the heavens. It endures forever. And His mercy goes out to sinners like you and sinners like me. And the height of the heavens and the expanse of the heavens speak to us of the mercy of God. His mercy. It's in the heavens. And that's surely where His mercy came from for you and me. His mercy came down from the heavens. And in His great mercy for us one day, He sent His own Son. He sent the Lord Jesus from the heights of glory, from the heights of heaven, down to Calvary's cross to save our never-dying souls. And mercy there was great. and grace was free, and pardon there was multiplied to me, and there my burdened soul found liberty at Calvary." So, in this psalm and in these verses we have the mercy of God. The mercy of God is in the heavens. But we see here a second great comparison that David makes concerning this time the faithfulness of God. David here speaking to God says this, Thy faithfulness reacheth onto the clouds. Thy faithfulness reacheth onto the clouds. God's faithfulness, it's just His dependability. It's His unchanging, dependable character. What He says He will do, He will do. What he promises to do, he will do. Now it might seem strange to us, as we look at this psalm, to see God's faithfulness here compared to the clouds. The clouds that move. The clouds that change their shape. The clouds that don't remain in the same place and don't remain the same. Sometimes dark, sometimes bright, always on the move, always changing. It might seem strange to us to see God's faithfulness compared to the clouds, the clouds that change. God's faithfulness, sure it doesn't change, but maybe that's the idea that David had in mind here when he compares God's faithfulness to the clouds. Now he didn't say, we note, that God's faithfulness is like the clouds. He didn't say that. He says God's faithfulness. It reaches onto the clouds. It never moves. It never changes, as the clouds do. But it reaches onto the clouds. Men break their promises. All of us know that. Men prove to be unfaithful. But God is not a man. He is not a man. He never forgets. And he never tells a lie. He is always faithful. And when he says something, he means it. And if he says he will do something, he will surely do it. There are many illustrations of God's faithfulness down through the centuries of time. Thousands of years ago. Thousands of years ago, God said this, while the earth remaineth. Seed time and harvest, cold and hate, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. That's what God said at Genesis 8, verse 22. And you know what God did? God kept His Word. Because every year that came and went ever since, that pattern continued. The first year, spring, summer, autumn, winter. The second year, spring, summer, autumn, winter. The third year, spring, summer, autumn, winter. You get the idea. Every year, ever since, spring, summer, autumn, winter. God was faithful. Summer and winter. Springtime and harvest. sun, moon and stars in their courses above join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy and love." Sometime later, God's faithfulness is seen again. God said to a man by the name of Abraham, Thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them But in the fourth generation, they shall come hither again. Centuries of time went past. The people of Israel went down into Egypt. They became slaves in a land in which they were strangers. Had God forgotten His promise? No. God hadn't forgotten His promise. God was faithful. It came to pass, the Scripture says, that at the end of 430 years, even the self-same day it came to pass that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt, once again God was faithful. Once again God had kept His Word. One more illustration of God's faithfulness. The Lord once said through the prophet Isaiah these remarkable words, Behold a virgin. a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel." Centuries passed again. And the moment in time came when the fullness of time was come, and God sent forth His Son, born of a woman. And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and led him in a manger. God had promised that this remarkable thing would take place, and take place it did. God was faithful. God had kept his word. In everything, God is faithful. In everything, God can be relied upon. Nobody anywhere ever trusted him in vain. And this is surely the basis of our confidence in him this morning. Yes, it is true that there are times in our own experiences, times in our own lives when our faith is trying. And we can't work out the answer to the question, why? Why did this happen? Why did that thing happen? But we aren't asked to understand His faithfulness. We are called, as the Lord's people, to believe, to believe and to trust in His faithfulness. And we surely hold on to Him today. We surely believe in Him today. We surely trust in Him because we believe He is faithful and we can surely rely upon Him. The mercy of God, where is the mercy of God? The mercy of God is in the heavens. The faithfulness of God, what does it do? It reaches onto the clouds. But then thirdly, we have here the righteousness of God. David says, Thy righteousness is like the great mountains. The righteousness of God, where would we begin? Where could we end? Simply, the righteousness of God is just God doing that which is right. He is always right. He is always just. He is always holy. He is always pure, always right. He is always righteous. Well, what was in David's mind? As he compared God's righteousness to the great mountains, well, perhaps he thought that the righteousness of God is like a great mountain that never can change. It never can change no matter what way the wind blows, firmer than the firmest things on earth, even the great mountains of the world. The mountain ranges, the Alps, the Rockies, the Pyrenees, the Himalayas. His righteousness is firm and stable and unshakable. It never, never, ever changes. And then God's righteousness is not only like the great mountains in that it can never change no matter what way the winds blow, but also it's like a great mountain in the sense that it rises to a height that no one could ever climb. Nobody could ever climb the heights. Many a climber has lost his life trying to scale the heights of earth's greatest mountain. If any of us was to try to climb the heights of the righteousness of God, it would surely destroy us too. We could never scale the heights. We could never reach the standard. What needs to happen? What needs to happen is this. We need someone to do it for us. And that someone who does it for us is the person of Christ Himself. For thirty-three years here on earth, that's what He did. He climbed the heights of the righteousness of God. He did always the things that pleased the Father. He did no sin. He knew no sin. In Him was no sin. Always righteous. Always the righteous One. Jesus Christ, the righteous One, who becomes our righteousness when we place our trust in Him. And God's righteousness is like a great mountain that nobody could ever climb. But Christ climbed it for us when He climbed the hill of Calvary. And on Calvary's cross died the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God. The mercy of God, it's in the heavens. The faithfulness of God, it reaches to the clouds. And then the righteousness of God, it's right in the great mountains. And then David says something interesting at verse 6 of the psalm. You'll see at verse 6 that he says, O Lord, thou preservest man and beast. Now, he's been thinking about the sky. He's been thinking about the heavens. And then he's thinking about the clouds. And then he's thinking about the mountains. So he's coming down and then he says at verse six, O Lord, thou preservest man and beast. He's thinking about the earth itself. He says, Lord, you preserve man and beast alike. He thinks of the fields where the cattle graze. He thinks of the hills where the sheep feed. He thinks of the trees where the birds sing, the place where we live, where the farmer tills the ground and gathers in the crops and man and beast are fed. And he remembers this. God allows the survival of his creatures, the existence of his creatures, both man and beast. Of course, again, there are things we don't understand with regard to those who go hungry in the world today. with regard to terrible disasters that take place in our world. But the general principle remains of the preservation of man and animal life in this world. And in that surely, and here in verse 6, we see the goodness of God, as the psalmist did here when he said, O Lord, Thou preservest man and beast. The mercy of God, where is it? It's in the heavens. The faithfulness of God, it reaches to the clouds. the righteousness of God. It's like the great mountains. And then we come to the judgments of God. David says here his judgments are like a great deep. God's judgments are like the depths of the sea. The idea here is not the idea of God's judgment upon sin. The idea here is the idea of the things God decides to do. When David speaks of the judgments of God, he's speaking about God's decrees. The things God decides to do. Like the depths of the sea. They're far too deep for any of us. The average depth of the sea is 12,000 feet. That's two miles deep. That's the average depth of the sea. I was reading recently that there is a place in the Pacific Ocean called the Mariana Trench, and it's 36,000 feet deep. That's seven miles deep. I wouldn't like to be there. Too dark, too deep, too scary, and definitely too wet. Great unexplored mysteries there. Great unexplored mysteries in the depths of the sea. Seven miles deep, great mysteries there, just like the judgments of God. And so with the things that God decides to do, there are depths that we could never understand. We could never understand the mind of God. Paul said, Oh, the depths. O the depths of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. He is God, isn't he? He is God, isn't he? And we are dust, aren't we? And though we might try to understand the things that God does, Though we might try to understand the judgments of God, the works and ways of God, we have to just leave it with Him. Believe in Him and surely trust in all that He has decreed. The mercy of God, it is in the heavens. The faithfulness of God, it reaches to the clouds. The righteousness of God, it is like the great mountains. The judgments of God, they are like the depths of the sea. But then at the end of these verses, David comes to another comparison, a different picture entirely as he comes to a gentler, softer image as he comes to the lovingkindness of God. David says at verse 7, How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy What a lovely picture we have here. Here we have thought of the heavens, the heavens, the clouds, the mountains, the sea. But then we have here, in this beautiful verse, the shadow of a bird's wings. The idea here surely is the idea of young birds hiding under the wings of the mother bird, finding their warmth and protection there. A picture of those. All those who find their shelter and find their safety in Christ. We run to Him. We hide in Him. And we hide under the shadow of His wings when it says, Here the children of men put their trust. Under the shadow of thy wings, it just means they flee for refuge. Just as the manslayer in the Old Testament would have fled to the city of refuge, so it is that with no delay, with no hesitation, waiting for nothing, we fly away to God. That is trust. Simply putting, our trust in God. going to Him for refuge, refuge from all evil, refuge from all harm, refuge from all danger, refuge from ourselves, our sin, from hell, from death, from the devil himself. We put our trust under the shadow of His wings. Charles Wesley was sitting one day with the window open, sitting in his house in his study. And he looked up to see a commotion in the garden outside, to see a sparrow being chased by a hawk. Back and forward the sparrow flew in a desperate attempt to escape from the predator as it tried to take the bird. And then at the last minute, When the bird had exhausted all of its strength almost, the bird made a desperate attempt to get to safety as it flew to the open window where Charles Wesley was sitting, went through the open window and buried itself inside Wesley's coat. The incident inspired him to write his wonderful words. Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly. While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is high, Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, Till the storm of life is past, Safe into the haven guide. O receive my soul at last, Other refuge have I none. Hinds my helpless soul on thee, Leave, ah, leave me not alone, Still support and comfort me. All my trust on thee instead. All my help from thee I bring. Cover my defenseless head with the shadow of thy wing. The heavens, the clouds, the mountains, the sea, the shadow of a bird's wings, all of these things speak to us today of our God, our God, our God who we have come to trust, our God who we have come to serve. And so we take our refuge in Him who died and Him who rose again. Let's bow in a word of prayer and we'll sing a hymn together. Let's all pray. Eternal God, our loving Heavenly Father, we bless Thee for Thy Word that encourages us once again and speaks to our hearts and reminds us of the greatness of our God. We blessed even in all of these natural wonders, the heavens, the clouds, the mountains, the sea, even the wings of a bird. We're reminded of the greatness and the goodness of our God. To save the worship of our hearts this morning, our Father, Continue with us, we pray, as we remain around the table. Bless those who must leave us in a little while, and continue with us throughout the remainder of this day, for we ask these things in the Saviour's precious name. Amen.