Greetings again my Brethren. Well let us look at the last emotional nature of God, His pity. God’s pity is a most assuring and comforting nature that we as His children (and those not His children) can lean on and undergird ourselves with for support, consolation, and encouragement. This nature of God’s pity is always brought down to our human level where our infirmities, pains, and sorrows are felt and realized. In Psalms David talks about God as a father who pitieth his children. “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. 14For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. 15As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. 16For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.” (Psalms 103:13-16) Now in the Greek version this verse reads “Like as a father pitieth children.” Do you see the difference? The transcribers that penned the KJV assigned God’s pity to only his children, but that is not totally correct we all are God’s children even those who do not walk in the ways of the LORD, all souls are His no matter if they end in hell, “Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” (Ezekiel 18:4) But, God knows our frame, He made us, He knows we are as dust, He knows we are like the grass and the flowers in the field, He knows we shall pass away as the wind blows and we shall be no more, so He loves and pitieth us. Now this Godly fatherly pity (and not just the pity God has for man) goes out to those “that fear Him.” We know fear is the beginning of wisdom and understanding (Psalms 111:10) how could God not pity His children if they desire to know His wisdom and understand His ways. The more we desire to know God and His ways the more God will take pity on us.
Not only does God pity man, but He also pitieth plants and animals, “Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: 11And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?” (Jonah 4:10-11) Jonah lacked pity for the 1,000s of people in Nineveh whom God sent him to preach. God showed Jonah his heart (as he sat under a gourd) and took it a step further and said He even had pity on the cattle of Nineveh. God created cattle, all things were created by God and God pitieth all things. In James we read about the heart of God for man and mankind, “Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.” (James 5:11) To endure there must be something to overcome we are over comers so we must endure things in our lives and why are we happy because we know God takes pity on us as we go through not around or under, but through. We learn His tender mercy endureth for ever as we go through things as we come to know and depend on God’s pity. How could Job be patient? How could he see the day of the LORD? Job realized God’s pity and tender mercy for him. And if God had pity and tender mercy for Job how more the does God have tender mercy and pity for us.
Next month we will begin to look at God’s social nature and relationship with man.
