Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2705
“And why do You not pardon my transgression, and take away my iniquity?” Job 7:21.
NO man should rest until he is sure that his sin is forgiven. It may be forgiven and he may be sure that it is forgiven—and he ought not to give rest to his eyes, nor slumber to his eyelids till he has been assured, with absolute certainty that his transgression is pardoned and that his iniquity is taken away. You, dear Friends, may be patient under suffering, but not patient under sin. You may ask for healing with complete resignation to the will of God as to whether He will grant it to you, but you should ask for pardon with importunity, feeling that you must have it. You may not be sure that it is God’s will to deliver you from disease, but you may be quite certain that it is His will to hear you when you cry to Him to save you from sin. And if at your first crying unto Him, you are not saved, seek to know the reason why He is refusing to grant you the blessing you so much desire. It is quite legitimate to put this question to God again and again, “Why do You not pardon my transgression, and take away my iniquity?” We also ought to press this matter home upon our own heart and conscience, to see whether we cannot discover the reason why pardon is, for a while, withheld from us, for God never acts arbitrarily and without reason. And, depend upon it, if we diligently search by the light of the candle of the Lord, we shall be able to find an answer to this question of Job, “Why do You not pardon my transgression, and take away my iniquity?” Job’s question may sometimes be asked by a child of God, but it may be more frequently asked by others who, as yet, are not brought consciously into the Lord’s family.
I. I shall first take our text as A QUESTION THAT MAY BE ASKED, AS IN JOB’S CASE, BY A TRUE CHILD OF God—“Why do You not pardon my transgression, and take away my iniquity?”
Sometimes, beloved Friends, this question is asked under a misapprehension. Job was a great sufferer and although he knew that he was not as guilty as his troublesome friends tried to make out, yet he feared that possibly his great afflictions were the results of some sin and, therefore, he came before the Lord with this sorrowful enquiry, “Why do You continue to me all this pain and agony? If it is caused by sin, why do You not, first, pardon the sin, and then remove its effects?”
Now I take it that it would have been a misapprehension on Job’s part to suppose that his afflictions were the result of his sin. Mark you, Brothers and Sisters, we are, by nature, so full of sin that we may always believe that there is enough evil within us to cause us to suffer severe affliction if God dealt with us according to justice. But also remember that in Job’s case, the Lord’s objective in his afflictions and trials, was not to punish Job for his sin, but to display in the Patriarch, to His own honor and Glory, the wonders of His Grace by enabling Job, with great patience, to still hold on to God under the direst suffering and to triumph in it all. Job was not being punished—he was being honored. God was giving to him a name like that of the great ones of the earth. The Lord was lifting him up, promoting him, putting him into the front rank, making a great saint of him, causing him to become one of the fathers and patterns in the ancient Church of God! He was really doing for Job such extraordinarily good things that you or I, in looking back upon his whole history, might well say, “I would be quite content to take Job’s afflictions if I might also have Job’s Grace and Job’s place in the Church of God.” It may happen to you, Beloved, that you think that your present affliction is the result of some sin in you, yet it may be nothing of the kind.
It may be that the Lord loves you in a very special manner because you are a fruit-bearing branch, and He is pruning you that you may bring forth more fruit. As Rutherford said to a dear lady, in his day, who had lost several of her children, “Your ladyship is so sweet to the Well-Beloved that He is jealous on your account, and is taking away from you all the objects of your earthly love that He may absorb the affection of your whole heart into Himself.” It was the very sweetness of the godly woman’s character that led her Lord to act as He did towards her, and I believe that there are some of the children of God who are now suffering simply because they are gracious. There are certain kinds of affliction that come only upon the more eminent members of the family of God—and if you are one of those who are thus honored, instead of saying to your Heavenly Father, “When will You pardon my sin?”—you might more properly say, “My Father, since You have pardoned my iniquity and adopted me into Your family, I cheerfully accept my portion of suffering, since in all this, You are not bringing to my mind the remembrance of any unforgiven sin, for I know that all my transgressions were numbered on the Scapegoat’s head of old. Since You are not bringing before me any cause of quarrel between myself and You, for I am walking in the light as You are in the light, and I have sweet and blessed fellowship with You, therefore will I bow before You and lovingly kiss Your rod, accepting at Your hands whatever Your unerring decree appoints for me.” It is a blessed thing, dear Friends, if you can get into this state of mind and heart. And it may happen that your offering of the prayer of the text may be founded upon a complete misapprehension of what the Lord is doing with you.