Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2181
“He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says 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.
In our text God in condescension helps the sinner to believe in pardon by elevating his idea of God. Because God is infinitely superior to man, He can abundantly pardon. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says 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.” He can abundantly pardon because His Nature is not on our level. May God bless what I shall say and enable doubting ones to have confidence in Divine mercy and at once receive the pardon of our God!—
“Pardon for crimes of deepest dye, A pardon bought with Jesus’ blood.”
I. YOUR OWN THOUGHTS JUDGE PARDON TO BE IMPOSSIBLE. Let me show you why. To some it seems impossible that there can be forgiveness for them, because of some special, secret, gross and grievous sin. Most persons, when they remember their past lives, see a certain spot blacker than the rest. Perhaps more light falls upon that spot than upon any other, but certainly the eye of memory constantly returns to it. And when they take a view of their lives, they are overwhelmed by the remembrance of certain enormous transgressions. In conversing with enquirers, it has been my painful lot to hear many an awful story which will never be repeated by me.
They weep over sins inexcusable, sins foul and terrible, but oh, it has always been a delight to me to be able to say, “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men!” I have never heard in secret of any special action that has seemed to me—even seemed to me—to be beyond the reach of Divine Grace! “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” Those convicted of sin who think their cases heinous beyond all others are sometimes astonished when we tell them that many such have been forgiven and remind them how the Apostle, after he had mentioned all manner of enormities, says, “And such were some of you; but you are washed.”
They fancy Christ only came into the world to save saints—but He came into the world to save sinners. They imagine that He saves those who think themselves sinners and are not truly such—but it is not so. Jesus did not come to save sham sinners, but those that have committed real sin and ought to be ashamed of what they have done. Jesus died for
the guilty. Do you think that the ransom paid in His blood on Calvary was for trifling offenses? No, verily, the Infinite One died because enormous sin was to be put away. Believe, then, in a great Savior for great sinners!
To others the difficulty of pardon seems to lie not so much in some special offense as in the number of their sins and the long continuance of them. “Look,” says one, “I now perceive that I sinned when I did not think I was sinning. I sin in word, I sin in thought, I sin in motive, I sin in spirit, whereas I thought I had but few sins.” In your room the air seems clear and pure enough till you let in a beam of sunlight through a hole in the shutter. Look! Look! Look! Why, dancing up and down in that ray of sunlight there are myriads of objects! So, within the action which appears quite innocent, there may be myriads of evils which are discovered to us by the light of God when the eyes of conscience have the scales taken from them.
To have lived in sin for 20, 40, 60, or 80 years appears to the awakened conscience to be a very dreadful thing—and a dreadful thing it is. It is cruel to provoke a person for five minutes—to go on provoking him for an hour is abominable—but to provoke God year after year, as sinners do—is a tremendous crime which might seem to be beyond mercy. So the heart feels and hence the need for such a text as mine. Others have been grievously oppressed with the idea that they could not be pardoned because of the willfulness of what they have done. “I did, on such-and-such an occasion,” says one, “distinctly prefer sin to righteousness. I sinned against great light. I had to do violence to myself to go into evil company and to commit sin. I sinned by an awful constraint which I put upon my conscience.”
Certainly this is a very grievous evil. To sin willfully is dangerous to the last degree. Willfulness is the very damnableness of sin. Sin committed of malice aforethought, against light and against knowledge, is sin, indeed. I do not wonder that you think it impossible that you should be forgiven—but I would have you remember that your judgment is nothing as compared with God’s Word and God’s Word declares that if you forsake your way and turn to the Lord, “He will abundantly pardon.” Be not astonished when I tell you that you are much worse than you think you are! Even though you have a very terrible idea of yourself, that idea does not come up to the truth. But, notwithstanding this, if you were 10,000 times worse than you are, still God, the infinitely merciful, is able, for Christ’s sake, to forgive you all trespasses and to blot out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions and, as a cloud, your sins!