S. God's Ways not Man's Ways

GOD’S WAYS NOT MAN’S WAYS

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” - Isaiah 55:8-9 THIS statement may be viewed, either first, as giving the reason that makes the sinner’s repentance necessary (Isaiah 55:7), “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts;” “For my thoughts are not as your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord;” or secondly, as confirming the assurance of full and free forgiveness (Isaiah 55:7), “Let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon:” he may be sure of this; “for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord;” or thirdly, as an assertion of the stability of the divine purpose and the certainty of its fulfilment (Isaiah 55:10-12). It is the purpose of one whose thoughts are not your thoughts, and whose word in the moral economy will infallibly be as effectual as is his reign in the material earth, and who, out of the songs of a renovated world, is determined, whether you believe or no, to make for himself a name.

Considered in the first of these lights, the text places the necessity of repentance not on the footing of a mere arbitrary or discretionary appointment on the part of God, but on the footing of his essential nature. It is not merely because God says it, that the wicked must forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; but because God is what he is, Not as if it were a required and stipulated condition of God’s favour, but because even God, being such as he is, cannot arrange it otherwise: “The wicked must forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts” (Isaiah 55:7). Again, taken, according to the second view, in connection with the assurance given to the sinners, however wicked his way, and however unrighteous his thoughts, that on his turning to the Lord, the Lord will have mercy upon him, the text at once magnifies the grace of God, and explains the principle on which it is dispensed; not after the manner and measure of such forgiveness as is common between man and man, but according to the nature of God himself; after a manner, therefore, and a measure, worthy of God, and such as never would have entered into the heart of man, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” Finally, regarded in its third aspect, as bearing on what follows, rather than on what goes before, the text unfolds the ground of that confidence which you may have, who comply with the call to return unto the Lord. It is impossible that, returning to him, you should ever perish, for he to whom you return is not one whose thoughts, however kind, may yet come to nought. He is not one whose ways, however gracious, may yet be turned aside. That is too often the issue of men’s kind thoughts and gracious ways towards one another. He is one whose word cannot return unto him void. And his word, his will, irrevocable and irresistible, is that the ruin of the fall shall be signally repaired; “For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off” (Isaiah 55:12-13).

Such being the threefold work and triple excellency of this announcement of the text, I would now endeavour, by the help of God, to ascertain (1) against what errors; (2) with what qualifications or limitations; (3) with what simple truth, as it respects the sovereign majesty of God; and (4) with what variety of adaptation to the experience of man, this great doctrine concerning the Most High is to be maintained.

I. The errors, in opposition to which the doctrine of the text is to be asserted, are those connected with what has been technically termed anthropomorphism. This, in its grosser form, is the ascribing of a body and bodily organs to him who is a spirit; interpreting literally those expressions that often occur in Scripture - “the eyes of the Lord;” “the hand of God;” the “ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.” The more subtle and refined sort, however, is that which, without investing God with a human form, would conceive of him as subject to human passions, with all their alternations of violence and weakness. Thus, on the one hand, the presumption of the wicked in their wickedness, and the fond reliance of superstitious formalists on their ceremonies and duties; as well as, on the other hand, the weariness even of the godly, in their sufferings of wrong, and waiting for good, may all be traced to that radical vice in what may be called our natural religion - the judging and measuring of God by ourselves. The same spirit, also, is vividly represented in some of the Lord’s parables, as in the wicked and slothful servant saying to his Lord, “I knew thee, that thou wast an austere man, lo, there thou hast that is thine;” in the labourers sent first into the vineyard grudging the employer’s kindness, and questioning his fairness, when he requites equally with them those hired at the eleventh hour; in the elder son remonstrating with his father for the mirth and gladness at the prodigal’s return; ay, and in the prodigal himself, on his first determining to return, when all he dreamt of asking from his father was some spare bread from the hired servants’ table, and that, too, on the terms of a hired servant’s work and wages. In all these and similar instances, we trace the working of the same disposition to bring down God to the level of man; and the root of the whole evil really is the enmity of your carnal mind against God: you will not, cannot understand, because you do not love or like the God with whom you have to do.

You have a quarrel or controversy with him, in which, as your own hearts bear witness, you are in the wrong; and, as is usual in such a case, you do injustice to your adversary. It is thus in human affairs. Is there any one with whom you are on unfriendly terms? Is he one who has claims upon you that you are not willing to recognise, and cause of complaint against you that you cannot bring yourself frankly to confess?

Ah! how apt are you to judge of him, not merely by what is best, but by what is basest in your own disposition; to pervert everything he says and does, and look with a jaundiced and jealous eye on whatever indication of his mind he may be giving. Does he pipe to you? you will not dance. Does he mourn to you? you will not lament. Does he signify his just displeasure in language of deep and solemn sadness? Oh! he is in a passion; but by and by he will cool down and relent - a few compliments and concessions will appease him. Is he, again, gentle and uncomplaining, neither opening his lips, nor lifting his hand in wrath? It is because he does not really feel, or notice, the affront. You scarcely thank him for not taking instant vengeance, imagining that it is simply because he dares not, or because he cares not. Does he insist on any right he has over you? he is harsh and arbitrary - abridging your liberty, imposing a yoke of bondage. Does he come to you with proposals of peace, offering you terms the most liberal and large and loving? Still he is to be feared or suspected even when bringing gifts. He must have some end to serve; or, at any rate, he is now a suitor for your favour; he is making advances to you as if he needed you, as if he were giving in to you, and you accordingly may stand off and be on your guard, and take time, and use your discretion as to entertaining his advances and surrendering to his importunity. Thus, do what he will, he cannot get you to give him credit or do him justice. The miserable jealousies of your discontented breast distort the features of his character, as they are reflected from your own. Nay, you will perversely make him out to be even worse than yourselves; suspecting him of what you would be ashamed to be suspected of yourselves, and almost finding a pleasure in painting him with darker colours than you hope any one could even use in representing any action of yours. Such is your ingenuity while living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another!

Such also, too often, is your perverse wilfulness in estimating the thoughts and the ways of your God! Even you who believe, but too frequently err in this very way, doing great injustice to your Father in heaven, and charging him foolishly, in reference to his dealings with you, with what is but too like the caprice and wanton cruelty or carelessness of man. How many doubts, dark thoughts, and misgivings and fears; how many instances, too, of indulgences tolerated, and acts of worldly conformity ventured upon, may all be traced to this source! Thus, with Jonah, on the sudden withering of some gourd, you feel as if you did well to be angry; or with David, in his infirmity, you are envious at the foolish, seeing the prosperity of the wicked, and asking the ungrateful question. Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Or, like Lot, you venture into Sodom, reckoning on God’s protection when following your own ends; or, like Thomas, you will refuse to abandon your sullen unbelief until you receive a sign. In all such instances, are you not judging God after the manner of men? investing him with some of the least amiable and least respectable attributes of infirm or corrupt humanity? And is it not sad to think what a proof all this affords of remaining dislike to God.

What! is God still your enemy, that you should, even in momentary thought, impute to him anything like a design to vex and torture you? Nay, do him right in your esteem of him. Take him at his word. Trust his faithfulness; rely on his truth. Believe in him whom he hath sent; believe and be saved. Do you still refuse? or is it the holy eye of God that you would hope to evade? Ah! can it be possible that you experience something like a feeling of relief in the thought that surely he will turn away his eye, or wink, as one of yourselves might do when you are transacting some questionable piece of business, or for once, it may be, allowing yourself some doubtful kind of freedom? Can you venture to translate into plain words the sentiment or principle on which, in such a case, you imagine God may be expected to deal with you? Would it not be every whit as offensive as the representing of him in a bodily human shape?

II. The testimony of the text, however, is not to be overstrained. There are qualifications and limitations that must be practically observed in applying it. These, every genuine and honest heart will instinctively feel; and they are plainly enough indicated in his Son.

1. In the first place, we are more than once expressly taught to judge of the heart of God by what is in the heart of man. “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?” “Which of you, being a father, if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone, or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?” In the two latter passages the point turns upon contrast, as adding weight to comparison, and the argument runs in the form of a much more, “Can a woman forget the sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?” “She may forget, yet will not I forget thee.” And again, “If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask.” In the same way, the three parables of the lost sheep, the lost piece of money, and the lost prodigal son, all proceed upon the analogy of a human sentiment ascribed to the divine mind, and lose all their meaning, and beauty, and pathos, and practical value, if the peculiar emotion with which God regards sinners, lost and ruined, be not represented as the same in kind, though infinitely greater in degree, with that which among men prompts search and sacrifice for a missing object of attachment, the warmest of welcomes when that object is restored, and a joy with which all generous minds can sympathise when the cry is raised, I have found that which I had lost,

2. Then secondly, but for such a liberty and warrant as we now contend for, some of the most affecting of the inspired pleadings and promises in the Bible would be cold and heartless. Take, for instance, the appeal of the distressed church in Isaiah: “Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory: where is thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies towards me? are they restrained?” (Isaiah 63:15); or the utterance of pity on the part of God, as if he were expostulating with himself in Jeremiah: “Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still; therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord” (Jeremiah 31:20); or finally, the outburst of relenting tenderness in Hosea: “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city” (Hosea 11:8-9).

Mark the last of these plaintive passages we have read (Hosea 11:9). In the very midst of it a parallel assertion to that of our text occurs, “I am God and not man.” This is given as the very explanation of that internal conflict, as it were, in the heart of God, that the Holy Ghost has described in language so thoroughly human.

3. For, in the third place, there is a great truth to be brought out here, that the perfection of God, in respect of which he is to be contrasted with man, consists not in the absence of sensibility, but in its very intensity, and purity, and power. It is not that he feels less, because he is God and not man, but that he feels more, infinitely more. Every human affection that can consist and co-exist with holiness, is but a faint image and shadow of the divine: and while the affection, as it is in God, transcends as to its purity and power what it is to man, as far as the heavens are higher than the earth, it is still as to its essential nature identically the same affection. Were it not so, indeed, the incarnation of the Son and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in believers would be not blessed realities, but mere formal phrases or wild impossible fictions.

Thus, as to the first, without unduly prying into that holy mystery, we may at all events perceive that this union, intimate, and thenceforth to be indissoluble, between the two natures, the human and the divine, in the one person of the man Christ Jesus never could have taken place, but for the essential harmony and sympathy that there is between the highest attributes of the Godhead and what constitutes the best virtue and excellency of manhood. It is an outrage on every idea we can form, in relation to such a subject, of common propriety, and decency, and truth; it is like the classical story of the fastening of the dead body to the living, with these two intolerable aggravations, that the fastening is a personal union, and a union for eternity; it is, in short, simply monstrous, unnatural, in a high sense of that term, inconceivable and impossible, that the Son, being God, should become man, if God’s thoughts may not be man’s, and man’s ways God’s. True, it is your human nature, pure and sinless, that the Son takes into union with his own divine nature. But consider. Is not sensibility - keen, thrilling, exquisitely sensitive - the very perfection of human nature? And is it not a perfection unfolded in exact proportion to the holiness of that nature? It is unfolded, doubtless, in subjection to reason and to law, the intelligence of man and the commandment of God; it is unfolded as no mere blind instinct or casual impulse, but as a chastened, sanctified principle. It is unfolded, however, as only on that very account all the more keen, lively, and susceptible, or blind instinct may be deadened; and casual impulse overcome; but the exquisite tenderness of a holy conscience and a loving heart can never be seared or blunted, but must characterise, as they will ennoble, manhood for ever. And it was this manhood, this characteristic and noble manhood, with its tears, and groans, and sighs, its joys also, its kindnesses, its sympathies, its loves, that the Son of God welded, so to speak, into his own essential Godhead, when he the eternal Word became flesh, and could he have done so if there were nothing akin to the sensibility of man’s nature in the Godhead itself? Could he have wept as man with the widow of Nain and the sorrowing sisters at Bethany? Could he have shed tears over Jerusalem, or suffered his bloody sweat in the garden, if sorrow and sin did not really affect and move his divine mind, exactly as they touched his human soul? Remember his own saying in reference to his whole character and conduct on the earth, “Whosoever hath seen me, hath seen the Father. He could not have said this if the divine nature he shares with the Father were wholly opposite in this quality of sensibility, or a warm, quick, living, and loving heart, from the human nature which he shares with you. Be sure then, brethren, that the incarnation is a great fact. It gives the deathblow to pantheism in both its forms, as it is the denial of a personal God altogether, and as it is the denial of his personal affections, feelings, sensibilities. It brings God before you, both as a living, and as a loving and hating God. Your God is no mere abstract personification of the plastic power of nature, or the ideal intelligence of the universe. He is one, conceive of him otherwise as you may, who has a heart as well as a hand in whatever is going on in the universe, in the falling of a sparrow to the ground, and the touching of a single hair of your head.

2. Then, again, as to the second great fact, the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in you as believers, the very idea would be preposterous, as well as blasphemous, otherwise than as a mere hyperbole and exaggerated figure of speech, if there were not a sense in which God’s thoughts are as your thoughts, and your ways as God’s. Is it true that the Holy Ghost, who is himself God, takes up his abode, really and personally, in your heart, believer? Much, alas, must he meet with there most uncongenial, distasteful, offensive; and oh, what wonder is it that he is not speedily driven away! But the feelings he himself calls forth within you, the affections he himself renews and hallows, the spiritual sensibilities he himself creates, when he breaks the hard heart and opens the fountain of all its tears and gladness,- these cannot be foreign to the nature of that divine inmate who now finds a home within you. Nay, it is with these very sensibilities, in their most acute and poignant exercise, that this sympathising Spirit concurs and conspires when he joins himself to you. “For the Spirit likewise helpeth your infirmities, for you know not what to pray for as you ought, but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for you, with groanings which cannot be uttered.” These unutterable groanings are the workings of sensibility in you; the deep movements of a quickened conscience and a broken heart; groanings for another’s pain and for your own. And so far from there being any incompatibility between such groanings and the divine nature of the Spirit, it is these very groanings that the Spirit takes as his own; giving them, without utterance of yours, a direction heavenward, and a voice entering into the ear of heaven’s Lord. For “he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit because he maketh intercession for the saints, according to the will of God.” The groanings which cannot be uttered become identical with the mind of the Spirit, and as the mind of the Spirit, they are known by the Searcher of hearts.

These thoughts have led us somewhat beyond our theme. Before returning to it, we may offer two practical reflections. As to yourselves, observe wherein the divine perfection of your Christian character must lie, - not in ridding yourself of your human affections, and human sensibilities, and human passions, - but in assimilating them more and more to the corresponding attributes and qualities in God. There is in some quarters a notion that the believer is, or ought to be, a passionless, emotionless being, rigid and severe, not open to impressions of rising feeling or relenting tenderness, not given to weep, but made of sterner stuff, and that too much warmth of heart may unfit him for the part he has to take in reproving sin, and witnessing for God against evil. Now, that part is no easy one; nor can we, in our present state, altogether understand how our nature is to be fitted for such a work of judgment as is described in that Psalm (Psalms 149:1-9), in which it is said of the meek that they have the high praises of God in their mouth and a two-edged sword in their hand, to execute vengeance upon the heathen and punishments upon the people. But assuredly, it is not by blunting the edge of feeling that we are to make the task less difficult, either of testifying to the world now, or of assisting in its judgment at the last. Remember how he who was about to inflict his vengeance on Jerusalem, within the space of a few short years, yet himself, beholding the city, wept over it. Be ye like-minded and like-hearted with him. His soul was tender; let yours be tender too. Only let your soul be tender, as his was, in reference to what touches the honour of God as well as in reference to what affects the welfare of man. Be zealous for God. Be indignant against sin. Be compassionate to sinners. So will you sympathise the more with him, who, dealing with sin, cried in an agony, “Father, let the cup pass,” and dealing with sinners, prayed for them on his cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” As to God, the God with whom you have to do, be sure that you apprehend his real and living personality, and in the truest sense, his humanity. Beware of worshipping a name, an idea, a dim abstraction, and, as it were, infinite vacancy of space. Be sure that he is the living and true God. There may be danger in conceiving of him as too like yourselves; but there is danger also in conceiving of him as too unlike, - remote, withdrawn from your sympathies as well as from your senses, - somewhere and somehow existing in the universe, as the great first cause of all things, - not near you and with you as an actual living person with whom you are to have dealings, as the God in whom you live, and move, and have your being. And beware especially here lest in your anxiety to explain away what may seem to savour of human passion in the delineations the Scripture gives of God, you fritter down into empty, unmeaning phrases the terrible denunciations against sin and sinners. The anger of God, his wrath, his vengeance, his hatred of iniquity, his rage against the oppressor, - these are ideas that offend a refined taste, and are interpreted as little more than phrases, words full of sound and fury, but really signifying nothing. The expressions may be liable to abuse, if they suggest to us such false views of God as the heathen have their idols, when they conceive of them as hasty, irritable, impetuous, yet withal capricious, like themselves, easily placable and soon appeased, when the fit of violent resentment is over, and a better humour succeeds. But on the other hand, let no man evade their literal force, - no man especially who has ever well weighed the Lord’s uttering woe, woe, and triple woe, against the Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. “God is angry with the wicked every day;” and with his own people, too, when they provoke him by their sins. And his anger is a real emotion, fierce, terrible. If it be kindled but a little, it will burn as a fire. Who, then, can dwell with its everlasting burnings? “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Sinners, in the hands of an angry God, how can ye contend with his fury as an adversary? Rather hear his voice of tender expostulation, and oh, believe that he is in earnest, and feels all that he says when he appeals to you with such human tenderness, - “Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?” “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:7-9).

III. Now we may partly understand the real import of this text, in which God bears so emphatic a testimony. “Is this the manner of man, Lord God?” Such was the exclamation of David, upon a review of all that the Lord had done for him as well as a consideration of all that the Lord was promising to him, as his reign was drawing to a close. So may every child of David, every true follower of Jesus, much more exclaim. So may he respond to the Lord’s appeal concerning himself. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” In that appeal, the Lord comes forth to tell you that he does not mean to treat you either as you have treated him, or as you, were you in a position like his, might treat others situated as you are now. As to your actual thoughts and ways towards God, how emphatically and affectingly true is it that they are not as God’s towards you. He never yet has dealt with you after your sins, or rewarded you according to your iniquities. He never has forgotten you, as you have forgotten him; or ceased to care for you, as you have ceased to care for him; or cast you utterly away, as you have rejected him. Oh! what a contrast between what has been so long in your heart towards him and what has all along been in his heart towards you! In your heart towards him, what wounded pride, what hard thoughts, what unworthy suspicions, what grudging even of the scanty, meagre, formal service that mere fear would not suffer you to withhold from him, what excusing and justifying of yourselves when forced to meet him, and what a feeling of relief when you could contrive to get away! All the while, in his heart towards you, what unwearied patience, what unprovoked benignity, what disinterested compassion, what overflowing good will; not a thought, not a feeling of dislike to you, no resentment, nothing but such love as moves him to give his own Son to die for you, and his blessed Spirit to strive with you in the ever urgent calls of the gospel of his grace. Is this the manner of man, Lord God? And when you return to him, how is he prepared to treat you? Not certainly as you have been treating him. There is no coldness, no distant civility, no upbraiding, no putting of you off with ceremony, as you have too long or too often been putting off him. His thoughts not being as your thoughts, he has made provision most ample for his ways not being as yours. He has prepared for you a reception very different from any you ever dreamed of preparing for him. He has caused the sacrifice to be slain beforehand. He has opened the fountain that cleanses from all sin. He has promised the new heart, without which you cannot be his: and, so far from being like you - distant, shy, suspicious, slow to take the first step, or condescend to the first move towards reconciliation, he waives even his right to demand a previous submission from you. Though the offended party, he will be himself the first suitor for peace; he will come to you, and plead with you, and wait for you, and ask and seek and knock, and not let you alone until, feeling you can stand out no longer, you give way, and give in, and consent to be reconciled. Is this the manner of man, Lord God? But not only do his thoughts and his ways towards you transcend your actual ways and thoughts towards him; they transcend also all that could have ever entered into your heart. You never could have imagined beforehand such a mode of dealing with returning sinners as God is pleased to adopt; and even now that he has revealed it, and is giving you a spiritual discernment of it, you cannot fully realise it. For there is nothing in your nature that is an adequate counterpart to it; nothing so nearly the same as to afford you an adequate measure of it. It is true, you can form a notion of kindness, generosity, self-sacrificing affection, and bountifulness and liberality; but the full meaning of the comparison between the heavens as higher than the earth, and his ways and thoughts as higher than yours, you can know only if you can know first what is lowest in the earth, and what is highest in the heavens, and what is the vast space between.

What is lowest in the earth? what but the sinner; what but myself - myself, of sinners the chief; sunk in the lowest depths of corruption, and guilt, and woe? What is highest in the heavens? Is it thou, blessed Jesus, thou Son of the living God; thou who dwellest in the bosom of the Father? Higher than thou art, or than is the Father’s love to thee, nothing in all heaven ever was or ever can be. And what are God’s thoughts now? what are his ways? what is his plan and purpose of love? Is it not to span and bridge across this immeasurable distance between what is lowest in earth and what is highest in the heavens? The Son, in my stead, takes my lowest place in the earth, that I may share his highest place in the heavens.

Literally then the measure of God’s ways and thoughts of love, as transcending any thoughts and ways of yours, is the vast interval between highest heaven and lowest earth. That interval serves doubly to measure them. It measures them in connection with what Christ became for you. It measures them in connection also with what you become in Christ. High indeed are the heavens above the earth; high is that holy complacency between the Father and the Son in the heavens, above the guilty estrangement of your heart, sinner, on the earth. Even so high are God’s thoughts of love to you, and his ways of mercy with you, above all that could ever have entered into your mind. What hath he devised? what hath he done for you, sinner? From the height of heaven he hath sent his own Son, that from the depths of this fallen earth he may raise you to what a height - even to a participation in the richest grace and glory of heaven itself; for in Christ you have the adoption of sons. And what will he not freely give to you as his sons? What will be his thoughts of love, what the ways of his beneficence and bounty toward you? what but his very thoughts and ways toward his only-begotten Son?

IV. The applications of this truth are as manifold as are the exigencies of human experience. Consider it in connection with the freeness, the fulness, the peremptory authority, and the faithfulness of the call and promises of the gospel.

(1) It is because his thoughts are not your thoughts that God justifies freely. He issues the invitation altogether gratuitously - “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money: come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness” (Isaiah 55:1-2). “The Spirit and the bride say come.” The pardon he dispenses is, in the strictest sense, unconditional; and the only terms on which he will consent to treat with any of you are the terms of grace, absolutely gratuitous and free. On no other terms, indeed, could he consent to treat with you without compromising his own high supremacy, and putting himself almost on a level with you. It may be well for a man like yourselves, with whom you have a controversy, to make the healing of your breach with him the removal of his threatened vengeance, and your restoration to a fair and decent good understanding a matter of bargain, and condition, and nice adjustment of preliminaries and terms; but such is not the manner of God. His thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are his ways your ways.

(2) For the same reason, the pardon he dispenses is very free, unreserved, as well as unconditional. It would not become him to do things by halves. If he is to have any friendly dealings at all with you, they must be thorough. If there is to be anything like reconciliation, it must be complete. Some, indeed, might advise otherwise. Affecting to be more prudent and cautious than God is himself; to consult better for his violated authority, and be more alive to the risk and danger of his amnesty being abused, they would counsel a less frank and generous treatment of the returning sinner; as if the elder son of the parable had stepped in officiously at an earlier stage, when his father was in the very act of embracing his lost one, to recommend caution as to the measure of favour bestowed - Nay, my father, not so fast or so far. Not that I recommend severity; not to drive to despair; but to put on trial - reserve the kiss, the robe, the ring. What would have been the indignant reply? “Is thine eye evil because I am good?” Suffer it to be so now.” Let me charge myself with the maintenance of order in my own house. And has not God so charged himself - made such provision, that to receive you otherwise than with complete favour, would be inconsistent, unsuitable, unworthy? Was it for a mere half-reconciliation that Jesus died, and rose, and revived, and received of the Father the promise of the Spirit? No, but for the ratification of a perfect covenant established, of perfect peace, opening the way to perfect reconciliation, and implying an eternity of perfect love and loyalty. And now, to make half terms of compromise on the footing of such a medium, might be the manner of men, but not thy manner, Lord God.

(3) But most peremptory, authoritative, sovereign, is the gospel call, as a call to repentance, as well as to reconciliation. For it is not based, as that impunity on which sinners reckon is supposed to be, on any surrender on the part of God of his just claims, any accommodation of his thoughts to your thoughts, or of his ways to yours. The sinners of earth imagine God has somehow become more like themselves, more complaisant, more indulgent, more indifferent. Nay, they dare to dream of this being the very benefit which the Son of God himself has purchased by his blood. They conceive of his interposition as making the Judge of all somehow less strict than he was before, and the God who cannot look on sin more tolerant of it and more tender towards it. This, this, is the very worst and most fatal form of the error against which the text is pointed - the measuring of God by yourselves. It is a lie of the devil. It is blasphemy at least against the Son, and may too soon, if wilfully persisted in, become blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. “God is not mocked.” It is not on terms involving any compromise of his claims or any relaxation of your duty that he deals with you. Such might be the manner of man; but God acts very differently. There is no weakness with him; no variableness or shadow of turning. He is the Holy One: he is the Almighty King. Dream not of his giving way or giving in to you. Give ye in to him, submit yourselves to him. Yield! surrender! obey!

Lord, I am thine. I resist no more. I stand out no more. Here am I - take me! Deal with me according to thy good pleasure. I am at thy mercy, at thy disposal! I justify not myself! I cannot save myself! I am dumb! I am in thy hands as one dead! But thou wilt quicken me; thou wilt raise me up; thou wilt take hold on me; thou wilt work in me! Thou wilt wash me in atoning blood, and clothe me with a justifying righteousness, and put thine own Spirit within me: and, instead of lowering thyself to me, as I once imagined thou mightst do, thou wilt raise me to thyself But “is this the manner of man, Lord God?”

Finally (4) The promises of God are and must be most faithful, because his thoughts are not our thoughts. “I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” “He is not a man that he should lie, nor the Son of man that he should repent.” When, therefore, he gives, he gives freely, fully, authoritatively, effectually, and for ever. “In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.” Yes, brethren, he will not grudge you any good thing. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” Ay, and when you find his grace more and more inexhaustible, you will have cause ever in new wonder to say with David: - “Who am I, Lord God, and what is my house that thou hast brought me hitherto? And this was but a small thing in thy sight, Lord God; but thou hast spoken also of thy servant’s house for a great while to come. And is this the manner of man, Lord God?”