Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1171
“He will not always chide: neither will He keep His anger forever.” Psalm 103:9.
THIS verse has reference only to the children of God. The Psalm is for them—they alone can sing it and this statement concerns them only—for this reason, that the wrath of the great Judge of all the earth is removed from every true child of God. Our sins were laid upon Jesus Christ and He bore them for us. The penalty due to us on account of them, or its equivalent, has been endured by Jesus Christ, our Substitute. Therefore, as before the Throne of God there is no accusation against a Believer, the justice of God has no anger towards him. “Though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away and You comfort me,” is the proper language of every justified man.
But let it never be forgotten that in pursuance of His gracious plan, God, who has blotted out our offenses as rebellious subjects, has now placed us in a new relationship, for, by adoption and the new birth, we have become His children and He is our Father. Though He neither can nor will ever summon us before the bar of His jurisdiction, either to charge us with sin or condemn us for it, inasmuch as Jesus Christ has put that sin away, yet, as our Father, He exercises discipline among His family, and we, as His children, are both chided and chastened for our faults. The sword of justice no longer threatens us, but the rod of parental correction is still in use. The judge no longer condemns, but the Father chides—“For what son is he whom his father chastens not.”
Remember, then, that we are not about to speak of Believers under the Law, or the anger arising out of the breach thereof—by His Grace we are quite clean from all the mire of that slough of legality. We are about to treat of Believers as the adopted, twice-born children of God—and of the rule of the Lord’s household—and the chiding and chastisement which are necessary to it. The text seems to me to say two things. First, He will chide. Secondly, He will not always chide, neither will He keep His anger forever.
I. The text very plainly says to us who choose to hear it, HE WILL CHIDE. It is implied that He will be angry, otherwise it were not necessary to say that, “He will not keep His anger forever.” Why will He chide? There are many answers, but we can mention only a few. He will chide His own dearly beloved children, first, because if He did not do so it would seem like winking at sin. Eli did not restrain his sons or chasten them as he should have done and, therefore, judgments fell upon his house. God is not foolishly gentle like that aged priest—He will sorely smite His children if they follow iniquity.
David had never displeased Adonijah at any time in saying, “Why have You done so?” And therefore on his deathbed the old man heard the news that his much-indulged son was seeking to snatch the crown from Solomon, his appointed heir. God is no indulgent David—He does not spare His children the chidings due to their sins. “The Lord your God is a jealous God.” In His people, sin is sin, and even yet more heinous than in those who are outside of the family, seeing that they sin against greater light and greater love. Sin is in the elect of God exceedingly sinful. The Lord regards it as an intolerable evil which His soul hates. It must be cleansed as by burning, for He will bring His people through the fire and refine them as silver is refined. Has He not said of His chosen, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will punish you for your iniquities”? A man may suffer a stranger’s child to do many wrong things without laying his hand upon him. But he makes his own child to smart if he dares to disobey.
God chastens and chides His children, next, because if He did not, others of the family would follow their ill example. If I knew a man who lived in sin and yet enjoyed the light of God’s Countenance, should I not naturally conclude that I, also, may live as he does and yet walk in the light as God is in the light? If we had heard of David’s sin with Bathsheba and had never read of his horror of soul, his broken bones and bleeding heart—should we not have inferred that we, also, might fall into the same filthiness—and find it a very small matter to return into the way of righteousness again?
Every father among you knows that he has often to chasten his child’s bad behavior—not only for its own sake but for the sake of the younger children—for if the fault were overlooked they might come to do the same.
Sometimes a frown which might have been spared the individual, considered by himself, must be put upon the parent’s face for the sake of brothers and sisters, lest they should fall into like fault. Remember that the Lord has a large family—and like a wise father He considers the interests of all. Consequently He does not allow sin to go unchided, lest it breed folly in others. Moreover, the world outside the regenerated family looks on with unfriendly eyes. If the erring child of God were never chided or chastened, then would worldlings say, “What does it matter that God denounces sin in us, when He winks at it in His own family?”