In his sermon titled 'The Compassion of Jesus Our Savior,' Peter Allison reflects on Jesus' compassion as depicted in Luke 23 during the crucifixion. The sermon begins with the account of Simon the Cyrenian, who was compelled to carry Jesus' cross, highlighting Jesus' physical weakness and humiliation. Despite this, Jesus shows remarkable compassion, warning the mourners of the coming wrath upon Jerusalem and pleading for forgiveness for those who crucified him. Allison emphasizes the greater spiritual suffering of Jesus—his alienation from God and the bearing of God’s infinite wrath—over the physical agony, which is briefly mentioned in the Gospels. He connects this to the curse from the Garden of Eden and elaborates on the meaning of excruciating pain, rooted in the crucifixion itself. The sermon concludes by underscoring that Jesus' compassion extends even to the criminals crucified alongside him, with one finding salvation. Allison encourages believers to follow Christ's example of mercy and compassion, highlighting that God delights in forgiving those who hope in His mercy.

Please turn to Luke chapter 23. Let's begin reading at verse 26. We have completed or finished the suffering of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, His trial before the Sanhedrin or parts of it, Herod and Pilate. And now we pick up this Gospel account at verse 26 as he is led away. Now as they led him away, they laid hold of a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, who was coming from the country, and on him they laid the cross that he might bear it after Jesus.

And a great multitude of the people followed him, and women who also mourned and lamented him. But Jesus turning to them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, Blessed are the barren wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed. Then they will begin to say to the mountains, fall on us, and to the hills, cover us. For if they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?

There were also two other criminals led with Him to be put to death, And when they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified him and the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left. Then Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do. And they divided his garments and cast lots and the people stood looking on but even the rulers with them sneered saying He saved others Let him save himself if he is the Christ the chosen of God the soldiers also mocked him coming and offering him sour wine and saying If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. An inscription was also written over him in letters of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. This is the king of the Jews.

Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed him, saying, If you are the Christ, save yourself and us. But The other answering rebuked him, saying, Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. Then he said to Jesus, Lord, remember me when you come in your kingdom. And Jesus said to him, Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.

Now it was about the sixth hour and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. Then the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn in two. And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. And having said this, He breathed His last." May Jehovah's merciful kindness comfort us according to His Word to His servants. Heavenly Father, As we continue to worship you today, we ask that this word that we have heard might be mixed with faith in us, that you would feed us with it, that you would strengthen us through it, and nourish our souls even as the food you supply nourishes our bodies.

And I ask that you would sanctify my sinful lips to proclaim the richness of your grace and compassion. In Jesus' name, Amen. Last night in looking another fact up, I found out that The Passion of Christ was the top-grossing R-rated movie of all time. And it's 53rd top-grossing movie of all movies of all time. It's still about the same even if you correct it for inflation with some of the great movies from decades and decades ago.

Now I haven't seen this movie, The Passion of Christ, and I don't recommend the movie as a movie worth watching. But it was popular, I understand, for its graphic and generally very accurate portrayal of the horrific torture and the excruciating physical suffering of Christ's death by crucifixion. It was an accurate portrayal, and it portrayed this aspect of the crucifixion in a very compelling narrative. In fact, The very word excruciating comes from two Latin words, excrux, or from the cross. The word we get to describe intense, horrific pain comes from an expression, a Latin expression, out of the cross, from the cross.

Excruciating pain is pain that is from the cross. It's the worst kind of pain that we can describe. And this is all true of the crucifixion. If you've heard some of the medical descriptions of the agony of death by hanging, or by crucifixion, as people hang for days and are slowly suffocated, It's a horrific and excruciatingly painful death. But you'll notice that all of that is not in the biblical scriptural narrative of the crucifixion.

That none of the accounts, gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, focus on these physical aspects of Christ's suffering on the cross, although they are certainly mentioned. And any reader of that day would have understood and known what kind of death was being described. The physical aspects of Christ's suffering are comprehended in very few statements. There's the scourging mentioned in Matthew, and I believe Mark, that Pilate released Barabbas, but when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. There is the description or mention of the crown of thorns and abuse by the soldiers in Matthew 27.

There's a significance in that because thorns were the sign of the curse. Remember in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve sinned, part of the curse upon man was the fact that the ground would produce thorns and weeds. The woman, the part of the curse that affected the woman was there would be a multiplication of conception and there would be a multiplication of sorrow. For the man, the multiplication of sorrow consisted in the thorns that would come out of the ground that make working the ground difficult. And That was a reminder every time a man goes to the field and has to pull weeds or has to deal with thorns.

It's a reminder of the curse upon us, of the curse upon the earth for our sin. There's a particular weed down here that is, I don't know the name for it, I am very familiar with it. I spent weeks digging it out across the front of my house. It went on underground for over 30 feet. One weed.

And because I wanted to dig it out in one piece, I spent a little extra time doing it. But it has these thorns on it that are woody. They're very strong. They're like needles. They don't break off.

And the weed itself is very strong. As I was digging this out, it has an ability to just wrap itself around trees and other bushes. But as I dug that out, I'm reminded continually of the curse upon the earth for the sin. Well, these soldiers took this crown of thorns and they pushed it upon Christ's head as they mocked Him and made fun of Him for calling Himself a King. That He who knew no sin became sin for us.

He became a curse in our place. And there's nothing more poignantly to signify that than to take this crown of thorns and put it upon his head. And so this is described in Matthew 27. They stripped him, put a scarlet robe on him, twisted a crown of thorns and put it on his head and a reed in his hand. And they bowed the knee before him and mocked him.

Hail, King of the Jews! They spat on him and took the reed and struck him on the head." This is the extent of the description of Christ's physical sufferings. Then there was his thirst, the extreme physical exertion that left Christ thirsty, and he satisfied that thirst after, and only after completing his work of suffering the wrath of God. And John 19 says, After this, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, said, I thirst. And a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there, and they filled a sponge with sour wine and put it on hyssop and put it to his mouth.

And so when Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, it is finished. And bowing his head, He gave up the Spirit. That's the extent of the Scriptures comment on that. And that's what they say about His physical suffering in describing the crucifixion. But the scriptures teach us that we are not to fear man who can only destroy the body, we are to fear God who can destroy the body and the soul.

And so the focus of the sufferings and the pains of death while they include these statements about these aspects of death, the far greater suffering that Christ endured was the spiritual alienation and the desertion by God. It doesn't mean that God left Christ when we say that God abandoned Christ or that God was separated, Christ was separated from God or alienated. What we mean is that the one who was in the bosom of the Father, the one who enjoyed this perfect fellowship, inter-trinitarian fellowship from all eternity, The one who lived in perfect harmony and perfect communication. A relationship which is in some ways typified by the marriage relationship. The husband and wife relationship.

This one is made to bear the unmitigated wrath of God and his alienation from the father. And so Luke though, unlike the other three gospels makes no mention whatsoever of any of these aspects of Christ's suffering in the crucifixion. Instead in this narrative that we read you'll notice that Jesus' words, I thirst, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, those words are not in, Luke does not record those. Luke instead focuses on Jesus' compassion in the midst of His crucifixion. Jesus looks at the wrath to fall on the people who are weeping for Him.

In verses 27-31. He has a concern for the souls of the very people who are crucifying Him. In verses 32-38. Crucifying Him and mocking Him. Making fun of Him.

Making fun of His title as the Messiah, the Christ. He has time to comfort a criminal who is crucified with Him. And Luke comments or notes Jesus' words looking forward to the restoration and the resumption of his fellowship with the Father. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. And so these are the words that we would like to look at this morning.

These words of Jesus to those who are around him, words of compassion in the middle of his great excruciating suffering. But first we have this note about as Jesus is being led away to be crucified and apparently has been made to carry his cross. We have this note that there was a certain man, Simon the Cyrenian, who was coming from the country, coming out of the fields possibly, and on him they laid the cross, that he might carry it." There's this one little verse regarding Jesus' humiliation that we don't want to miss. Simon the Cyrenian, he's said to be the father of Alexander and Rufus. Rufus is mentioned favorably in Romans 16 as someone that Paul wants to greet warmly.

Alexander, there are several Alexanders mentioned, but most of them would not be people that Paul would want to greet warmly. There are heretics and Jews and like and so on. But there are many Alexanders. So Cyrenian is the father of Alexander and Rufus. The fact that Luke mentions these names I think would indicate that these are people of some note among the Christian Church some names some people that would be known and recognized by Luke's readers and So this Simon well some have there are many ideas about who he is and we don't the Bible doesn't really tell us much more than that he's a Cyrenian some have thought maybe he was a foreigner maybe even a more most people from northern Africa area We really don't know and I think the best estimate is that this is a man who is a father of two men who are well known in the church.

And so he is made to carry the cross of Christ because Christ has been scourged as we learned in Matthew and Mark. And scourging is a horrific thing. Many people die just from a scourging. A scourging is something that the Romans used upon non-Roman citizens. Paul, being a Roman citizen, was able to save himself from being scourged by simply claiming the fact that he was a Roman citizen.

But a scourging was a very inhumane whipping with a whip that had bits of, possibly had bits of things sewn into the whip. Some people believe, some doubt that. And so this whip would be able to tear out flesh and chunks of muscle and just completely tear up a human body such that many people never recovered. And if they did recover, they would have lifelong wounds, lifelong debilitating weakness because of it. And so Jesus is apparently unable to carry the cross.

And so this man is compelled. Now that word used in Matthew and Mark to tell us about this is a word that means to compel. It's a demand made by a government authority upon a subordinate. There are only two places it's used in the New Testament. One here in regard to Simon carrying the cross, and the other in the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus says if a soldier compels you, if somebody compels you to go one mile, go with them too.

In other words, it's an unjust requisition of people and their services. And Jesus is saying in that situation, when you're being treated unjustly, don't complain and moan, but rather cheerfully go do more than what they're asking. The word originates, the Greek word originates from the celebrated Persian postal service And Herodotus describes this Persian postal service. It's a lot like our pony express, where they had throughout the Persian empire, the king set up stations and had fresh horses and people so that as soon as one horse was tired, they got another horse and another person. And by this means, they could get messages throughout that vast Persian empire in a matter of seven or nine days.

They could get a paper, a courier could get a message there. And so it really is, and to do that they could requisition a horse or a person's services in order to get the mail to go. And So it's something very much like our pony express, but that word, according to Herodotus, is Angerion, and that's the word that's used here to describe what happened to Simon. He was compelled, He was requisitioned to carry the cross. Now why this detail?

Why does Luke mention this in the other Gospels? He mentions it because it adds to Christ's humiliation as our Messiah. His humiliation specifically as our Messiah, it's not just a testament to his physical weakness after he's been scourged. But you remember, Christ did the same thing when he requisitioned a donkey that had never been risen on a cult, never been trained when he requisitioned that animal to ride on as the king when he entered Jerusalem a week, a few days earlier. And remember when we were looking through there, we recognize that this was Jesus exercising his kingly right over all creation to requisition this animal for his use.

And he did the same thing for the upper room. He sent his disciples in and and told them to that they would meet a certain person an Unlikely person a man carrying a pot of water and he would lead them to this room And that's the room they were to use and if they were asked any questions in these cases They were simply to say the master has need of it Jesus entered Jerusalem as a king and in doing that he was Requisitioning or in taking these things, he was requisitioning things that were needed for his kingly entrance and for his priestly work where he in the upper room where he instituted the Lord's Supper and washed the feet of the disciples. But what happens here is that he is not able as a king to requisition what is needed. It is the Romans and the Jewish leaders that exercise this kingly right to requisition Simon to carry the cross, and they compel him to do it. And so this is a definitive humiliation of Christ as King, that he is the rightful King, and it's his rightful place to have done these things, but This is done in this case for him.

He's not allowed to do it. He's denied his kingly prerogative to requisition the things that he needs. And so in this case, Simon is really not someone who is just helping Jesus. He's someone who carries out one more facet of his humiliation. That as the King of Kings he's prevented from requisitioning what he needs.

Simon is requisitioned by the Romans and the Jews. And so as this procession is going out to Calvary, there is a great multitude of people following him and women who mourned and lamented him. He would have been a very tragic figure, somebody that would be easy to feel sorry for, to mourn for as He is so weakened, so debilitated, bloody, beaten, unable to carry this beam on which He will be crucified. And the people are weeping for Him. And Jesus turns to them and says, Daughters of Jerusalem, don't weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.

It's not what you would expect someone to say in that circumstance. Most people when we're sick and when we're in extreme pain, that's about all we can think about. In fact, we have a tendency to be rather sharp and impatient with those who are around us because of our pain. I know I've been that way. But it's not so with Jesus.

He sees these women weeping and he takes this opportunity to warn them about the wrath that will come upon them. Now he's already warned these people more than once about this wrath that will fall on them. This was the whole point of his discourse to the disciples on the Mount of Olives. And he talked about this great wrath that was coming on them. But it was something that He preached as well to the people.

Jesus said that this time will come, the days are coming, in which they will say, Blessed are the barren wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed. That's reminiscent of how He described the fall of Jerusalem in the great wrath and the great tribulation in Matthew 24 and in Revelation. He said pray that your flight, because He told the people when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, that's your sign to flee Jerusalem. And pray that that flight not be on the Sabbath and that you not be nursing little ones because it's going to be very difficult. And if you're nursing a little one, that's even more difficult.

It's very difficult to travel with a little one. I flew home yesterday and and there was sitting right next to me or a young mother carrying traveling with her one-year-old baby and She was doing a very good job of it, but it was very difficult. She had a lot of things to keep track of. And so Jesus is speaking very practically when He gave that warning. And so He's saying these days are coming.

And The people are going to say in that day, to the mountains, fall on us, and the hills, cover us. This is a very familiar description of judgment. When the suffering is so bad, the agony is so extreme that People seek death by any way just to escape the horror of the situation. This was said in Hosea of Israel under the Assyrian conquerors. The high places of Avan, the sin of Israel shall be destroyed.

The thorn and the thistle shall grow on their altars, and they will say to the mountains, cover us, and to the hills, fall on us." And Revelation uses this exact same picture as it speaks of the wrath of God that would fall upon Jerusalem as the great harlot. Revelation 6, they will say to the mountains, cover us, follow us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of His wrath is coming. Who is able to stand in Revelation 9? In those days men will seek death and will not find it, and they will desire to die, and death will flee to them." And Jesus is saying this day, He turns to these women and He says, this day is coming and you should be weeping for yourselves and crying out to the Lord for His mercy.

Don't weep for me. He says there's going to be a far greater reason for weeping on account of this judgment that hangs over them. Then he uses an image that would be very well understood by anyone who has ever roasted a marshmallow or a wiener over the fire. If you take a dry stick and you try to roast a wiener over the fire, what happens? The stick quickly catches on fire, and then either it breaks off and your wiener falls in the fire, or the wiener catches on fire.

But if you use a dry stick, a green stick, then it doesn't catch on fire, at least not until the marshmallow or the wiener gets roasted. And you can put it in the fire and it may smoke a little, but it won't burn. And your food won't catch on fire. And you can roast it and then you can pull it out. And Jesus says, He refers to that very fact, for if they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?

Christ is the green wood. And Jerusalem here is the dry wood. And Jesus is confirming the certainty of this coming wrath. If this green wood bears the wrath of God certainly, this green wood, if Jesus the innocent is suffering this kind of wrath, what will happen to those who are guilty of crucifying the Lord of glory? If this green would, If this is happening to the green wood, what will happen to the dry wood?

Certainly the dry wood will also bear the wrath of God. They won't escape. But I think there's more here in this comparison about why it was foolish to be weeping for Jesus. And why Jesus likens himself to a green wood and Jerusalem to a dry wood. The larger catechism asks in question 38 why Jesus had to be God.

And the answer is that it was necessary that Jesus, the Mediator, should be God that He might sustain and keep the human nature from sinking under the infinite wrath of God and the power of death. And it goes on to give further reasons why, but the first reason they give is so that Jesus Christ might sustain and keep the human nature, His human nature from sinking under the infinite wrath of God. I think Jesus is alluding to this here. Jesus would be able to bear this infinite wrath of God in the day of judgment, which he was about to experience. He prayed to the Father, and his entreaties, Hebrews says, were heard.

And he was preserved. And the grave was not able to hold him because he defeated death. He rose again. He bore this wrath of God, this infinite wrath of God that is due to all of us. He bore it.

And he didn't sink into oblivion because he was God. Jesus was able to bear it. And His warning to them is, how are you going to bear this wrath of God? As dry wood. You won't.

We can't. We can suffer for all eternity. And remember, when you think about suffering for all eternity, it's not predominantly the physical pain. It's predominantly the spiritual alienation and wrath of God. It's being cut off from any grace.

We have immense graces that we enjoy, even all unbelievers and believers alike, here on the earth. The eternal suffering that Christ bore on the cross. In hell there is no grace whatsoever. There is nothing that is given that is not deserved. And there is no human that can bear that wrath.

If they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry? Jesus also has compassion for the souls of those crucifying Him. The very people that are inflicting this excruciating pain, the very people that are mocking him, making fun of him as for the humiliating him. When people humiliate us, We think we're doing good if we just walk away from the situation. We think we're doing well if we hold our peace and don't respond in kind.

And don't have a comeback to put them down and put them in their place. Jesus didn't just do that. He actually responded with an outpouring of compassion for them. He prayed for them. Father, Forgive them.

They don't know what they're doing. The robbers even got in on this. They were mocking him as well. They mocked him. They put this sign above him that said, This is the King of the Jews.

Now Pilate had no other purpose in putting this sign above Jesus that he was the King of the Jews other than to get back at the Jews. They had forced him to condemn an innocent man. He didn't like that. But God had so ordained the events that after declaring Christ's innocence three times, Pilate condemned this person, condemned Jesus, because he was cornered. He didn't have a choice and we looked at that last week.

So this was his way, this is one way of getting back at them to put above their Jesus, this is Jesus the King of the Jews And he put it in every language that was common in that day so anybody could read it Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. Greek is the language of the world because the Greek influence through Alexander the Great and Aristotle had taken over the world in the same way the English has taken over the world as the language of commerce. But then Latin was the language of the Romans and they were the current rulers and the Hebrew of course is the Jews. And so this is up there in all these languages saying that this is the king of the Jews. But see, just like God ordained for Christ to be declared innocent three times by the very man that would condemn him, Now he ordains through this same man to use his attempt to reproach and mock the Jews and Jesus to be the very means of proclaiming the Gospel.

In three languages, this sign proclaims that Jesus is the King of the Jews. Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah who was promised, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the seed of the woman promised in the Garden of Eden who would crush the head of the serpent. That's what Pilate is saying. He didn't know it. Just like Caiaphas didn't know when he said that it's expedient for one man to die for the nation.

Caiaphas didn't know what he was saying, but the Bible says that God ordained him to say that prophetically, because it's true. And so Pilate here is unwittingly proclaiming the very gospel that the Jews were seeking to destroy. And so with this sign above Him, His clothes being divided up, He sees in excruciating pain, he prays to the Father, Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. Now he's not forgiving them as the Messiah. He could have done that.

He had moved other people to repentance and forgiven them their sins. But he's asking God the Father to do so. This is a prayer that expresses his compassion in his human nature for the people that are hurting him. It expresses his compassion for a people who are under the wrath of God. And Peter calls us to follow Christ's example in Christ's suffering when he tells us in 1 Peter 2, who when he was reviled did not revile in return.

When he suffered, he did not threaten, but he committed himself to him who judges righteously. And so if we're called to follow Christ's example in His suffering. And then we have to ask ourselves, do we have compassion for people who are under God's wrath, as Jesus did? Do we have that compassion when we are well and strong and not hurting? Do we have that compassion that Jesus had when he was suffering?

It's very hard to do And even great saints have with difficulty been able to forgive those who have wronged them. Like think of Corrie Ten Boom and all the suffering that she endured. The hands of the Nazis. She had opportunity to forgive one of those guards when he stood before her years later. And it was difficult for her, She did, but it was difficult.

She acknowledges that struggle to have compassion for this man and to forgive him, like Jesus prayed. Or Sabrina Wormbrant. I highly recommend the recent movie of her life. The highlight of that movie. And as far as I can tell, this movie put out by Voice of the Martyrs is highly accurate to her book, the text.

The book, the text, and there it shows who, she was awakened out of her sleep by her husband and told that in her living room was sitting the man who had murdered her family. And all her family had been murdered, horrifically murdered. She alone was saved of all her family, they were murdered by the Nazis. And she's told by her husband, Richard, one of these men, the man who was known as the butcher of Prague, I think, was sitting in her living room. And she awoke, went out, and gave him a hug, and fed him supper.

And she says in a book that the only two men that she'd ever kissed after her salvation was her husband and this man. But that's the kind of compassion that we're to have. It's the compassion that Christ had for those that crucified him. He also had compassion for the robbers. These robbers are said to have participated in this mocking of Jesus, but the account in Luke is of the conversion of one of these robbers who just moments before apparently according to Matthew had been also mocking Jesus Because it says that in Matthew 27, even the robbers who were crucified with him reviled him with the same thing, the robbers in the plural.

So this one though was in the grace and mercy of God converted. And when the one robber is continuing to blaspheme, he's rebuked by the other. And he asks then Jesus, Lord, remember me when you come in your kingdom. And Jesus didn't say, well, I'm kind of busy right now, I've got other things that are on my mind. Jesus said to him assuredly, yes indeed, truly, truly, amen, amen.

I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise. How do you think of God the Father? How do you think of Jesus? In your mind, what do you imagine our Father is like? Yes, God is a consuming fire.

He is a God of wrath who takes vengeance on all those who do not obey the Gospel. But He's first and foremost a God of mercy. He doesn't retain His anger forever because He delights in mercy. He is gracious and full of compassion. The Bible says over and over again that God is gracious and full of compassion.

Psalm 111, He has made His wonderful works to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion. Psalm 112, unto the upright there arises light in the darkness. He is gracious and full of compassion and righteous. Psalm 145, The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy in many, many other places.

Speak of this mercy and compassion of God. And Jesus is the express image of the Father. Jesus is gentle and lowly of heart. Now we can err and think that, and forget the wrath of God, and think that our sins are of little consequence and that's certainly a dangerous error. But we can also err and forget the mercy and the compassion of God.

That God is fundamentally a God who does not retain His anger forever, but delights in mercy. And yes, we have sinned, but Our sins are forgiven. God forgives us our sins. Christ forgives us our sins. And He cleanses us from all unrighteousness so that we are accepted.

And so that He does take pleasure. He takes pleasure in those who hope in his mercy, not in those who stand and tremble before him and fear his wrath or fear his his displeasure, but rather Though he says he takes pleasure in those who hope in his mercy. So if we continue to think of ourselves as under God's displeasure because of our sin that he's forgiven, then we are really spurning His mercy and we are rejecting His compassion. Luke here shows us that Jesus is gentle and He is lowly in heart. He delights, he desires forgiveness.

He desires to forgive. He's gracious and he's full of compassion. And we honor him. And he takes pleasure in us when we hope in that mercy. When we bask in it and we delight in it and we praise him for it.

Says that he takes pleasure in those people. They are his people that he's redeemed. He's paid the penalty of our sin. He's purchased us by his precious blood. And as his children, we ought to, we ought to rejoice and delight in that forgiveness and be able to extend it to others as well even as we've been forgiven and to also delight in forgiving others as He delights in forgiving us.

Let's pray. Almighty Father in Heaven, we thank you this morning that you have forgiven us and that you are a God who delights in mercy and that you are gracious and full of compassion and that you answer all those who call upon you. Yes as Psalm 107 describes you rescue those who are in distress because of their own folly and their own rebellion and their own sin. And Lord we acknowledge that such we are. We thank you this morning for your mercy.

And we do hope, And we do delight in Your mercy and grace to us in Christ. In Jesus' name, Amen.