---

The three grandest objects in the kingdom of nature are the heavens, the hills, and the sea: the heavens for their clearness, their height, and their all-embracing circuit; the hills for their strength, their security, and their shade; and the sea for its boundless immensity, its unfathomable profundity, and its inexplicable mystery.

I. GOD'S MERCY. This means His loving-kindness to a sinner, His gracious disposition to receive again into favour those who were aforetime the objects of His wrath. Now, this mercy, says the psalmist, is in the heavens, which indicates —

1. The conspicuous and prominent position which it occupies in the kingdom of grace.

2. Since God has set His mercy in the heavens, it must overtop the highest mountain of man's transgression.

3. If God's mercy be in the heavens, we shall never be able to get beyond it.

(1) This is true in a very important sense of the entire family of man. For we live in a world of mercy.

(2) What is true of the human family as a whole, is likewise true and pre-eminently true of the individual saint. God's mercy surrounds him like the blue vault of heaven.

II. GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS. No doubt the psalmist refers to the particular character of rectitude which God maintains in all His dealings with His sinful creatures. At the same time, we cannot greatly err in attaching to the term its New Testament Signification of God's gracious provision for saving men through the obedience unto death of His Son.

1. The great mountains, "the mountains of God," as David calls them, suggest the idea of stability, or strength. Hence they are fit emblems of the righteous character of God, which nothing that may happen can ever prevent from ruling in all His dealings with His creatures; and of the righteous work of Christ through which grace reigns unto eternal life. It is everlasting as the high hills of God (Isaiah 51:6).

2. The great mountains speak of security or protection. Yet the security and protection of the hills are only emblems, beautiful and significant, but still faint, of that impregnable defence which is enjoyed by him who is arrayed in Christ's robe of righteousness, and who puts his trust in the righteous character of God.

3. The great mountains afford a shade to exhausted travellers as they pass along beneath a burning sky; and the like refreshment does a saint enjoy when in spirit he reposes in the finished righteousness of Christ.

III. GOD'S JUDGMENTS. These are His ways, acts, providential dispensations. Rightly called judgment is, as not being haphazard operations, but the solemn decisions of His infinite mind. Every step of the Divine procedure is deliberately weighed. God's judgments are like the sea in respect of —

1. Mystery.

2. Profundity.

3. Immensity.They relate indeed to the little speck of time in which we live, and the little spot of ground on which we stand, but they stretch away out as well beyond the confines of the tomb, away out into the unnumbered ages of that illimitable eternity into which we are fast going, as the sea spreads itself out beyond the gaze of men.

(T. Whitelaw, D. D.)

---

---

KJV: Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds.

WEB: Your loving kindness, Yahweh, is in the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.