Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2563
“Have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions and, as a cloud, your sins: return unto Me, for I have redeemed you.” Isaiah 44:22.
THIS declaration was not made to a pious and praying people, who kept near their God, but was spoken to idolatrous Israel—to those who, after having drunk from the fountain of living waters, turned aside to drink the drops that were to be found in broken cisterns. It was spoken to a people who, after they had tasted the good things of God and known the high privileges of true religion, yet turned aside with the nations of the world, forsook the God of Jacob, made unto themselves graven images that were not gods, provoked the Lord to jealousy and moved Him to wrath against them on account of their sins. These words of wondrous mercy were not spoken to the nation of Israel while living near God—who, notwithstanding, would have had sins to mourn over and to be forgiven—but they were addressed to a brutish and foolish nation, to a harlot people who had committed wickedness with all the idols of the heathen! They were those who had offered incense on their hills to false gods, who had made their children pass through the fire of Topheth in the Valley of the Children of Hinnom—to men who were filled with abominable and loathsome sins—men who had committed the crimes of Sodom and bowed down to Baal and Ashtaroth!
This promise was made to those who had wandered far from God, not because they repented, or because they believed, but simply and entirely of the Sovereign Grace of God, because, having set His affection upon them, He would not turn away from them because, having sworn unto their father Abraham that He would bless his seed forever, He still remembered them. He forgot them not, notwithstanding they had forgotten Him days without number—but provided them a Savior and now sends them, by the mouth of His Prophet, this comfortable assurance, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions and, as a cloud, your sins: return unto Me, for I have redeemed you.”
We will take this text as it shall open to us gradually and, therefore, we will give you the thoughts as they come to us. [This sermon is the one described in C H. Spurgeon’sAutobiography, Volume I, Chapter 32, where the beloved preacher gives a graphic account of a certain Sabbath evening when he delivered an extempore discourse from a text which the Holy Spirit vividly impressed upon his mind while the congregation was singing the hymn immediately before the Sermon. Readers of the Autobiography will also see how timely was the sudden and unexpected extinction of the gas lights mentioned at the end of the present discourse.]
I. The first is, that A MAN’S SINS MAY BE REALLY FORGIVEN LONG BEFORE HE KNOWS IT, for it is written, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions.”
If they knew it, there would be no necessity for telling it to them. If they understood in their hearts that their transgressions were blotted out, what need had they of a Prophet to come and tell them that it was so? Long before a man knows that his transgressions are pardoned, God may have pardoned and blotted them out. I do not say that a man receives actual pardon in his own soul, or a sense of justification without knowing it. I cannot believe, with some, that a man may be born again without being aware of it. I know there never was a natural birth without pangs and pains—and I am equally sure that there never will be a spiritual birth without some suffering and some agonies. A man is not to be born again when he is asleep—he is to know it and know it, he will, at some time or other in his life! Not constantly, it may be, but nevertheless he will know, even if it is only for an hour, that he is a child of God! I think he who never had one minute of assurance, never had faith. He who never knew himself to be a child of God, who never could say, “I believe
in Jesus,” never could see his sins blotted out—I think such an one does not know what faith is. It may endure for ever so short a time, but if it is real assurance, it springs from true faith and the man is saved.
But a man may have his sins blotted out before he knows it. And they may be blotted out when he does not believe that they are—and blotted out when he is full of doubt on the point—yes, they may be pardoned even when he cannot be persuaded that they actually are. I can tell you of persons whom, in my inmost soul, I believe to be the subjects of Divine Grace. I can see in them the marks of God’s power—He has convinced them of sin, they are humble, they are penitent, they are prayerful, they feel their guilt, they confess it—yet they have a haziness about their views of the Atonement and from this arises great darkness of spirit. They cannot see the plan of salvation and because they cannot see the plan, they do not, therefore, get a joyful sense of the thing, itself. Yet if these persons were soon to die, I am well assured that before they departed this life, God would give them such a glimpse of sunshine that all the clouds would be dissipated and they would be able to enter Heaven singing, as they waded through the stream of Jordan, “Christ is with me! Death is nothing. Christ is with me! He is my Helper and my Stay.” Long before they know it, their sins are forgiven.