Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2857
“The goodness of God leads you to repentance.” Romans 2:4.
GOD is often exceedingly good to those who are utterly unworthy of such treatment. “He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good.” Indeed, sometimes the evil seem to have more of the sunshine than the good have! David said, “I have seen the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a green bay tree.” God’s forbearance has been misinterpreted and even misrepresented by some who have implied, or actually asserted that God winks at sin and does not care how men behave, but treats all alike whether they are good or evil. Some have wickedly asked, as Job reminded his friends, “What is the Almighty, that we should serve Him?” Many have said, “Do not the wicked prosper? Do they not even die in peace? Is it not written concerning them, ‘There are no bands in their death; but their strength is firm’?” This is a misinterpretation of the merciful design of God towards the ungodly and is corrected by the Apostle in the verse from which our text is selected—“Do you despise the riches of His goodness and forbearance and long-suffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?”
The goodness of God to a man of evil life is not intended to encourage him to continue in his sin, but it is meant to woo and win him away from it. God manifests His Infinite gentleness and love that He may thereby kill man’s sin and, by His tender mercy, He may win man’s hard heart unto Himself—and by His abundant loving kindness, He may awaken man’s conscience to a sense of his true position in his Maker’s sight, that he may turn away from the sin which he now loves and may seek his God, whom he has despised and neglected. My fellow man, if you are still ungodly, yet you have been prospered by your God, understand clearly the Lord’s intention in your prosperity—“The goodness of God leads you to repentance.” You must not be so unwise, you must not be so wicked as to say, “I am prospering although I am living in sin and, therefore, I will continue to do so.” Remember what the Lord said through Isaiah the Prophet—“The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master’s crib.” Be you, at least, as wise as these brute beasts are and recognize from Whom your prosperity comes—and then accept as true, God’s explanation of His actions, as given by the Holy Spirit through the Apostle, and believe that “the goodness of God leads you to repentance.”
I. My objective, at this time, is that those who are enjoying the goodness of God, but yet have never repented of sin, may see their conduct in its true light and may be brought to a sincere and hearty repentance of their sin. To that end, I shall, first of all, spend a little time in mentioning SOME OF THE TOKENS OF THE GOODNESS OF GOD WHICH HE HAS LAVISHED UPON MANY WITH THE VIEW OF LEADING THEM TO REPENTANCE.
I commence with this remark—it is a great blessing to have been born of Christian parents, or even of parents who were respectable and moral. It gives one a good start in life where this is the case. On the other hand, I do not doubt that some have strong propensities to evil which have been at work within them from their very birth, so that they were more likely than certain others were to plunge into gross sin. Therefore, it is no small mercy to have been started in this world under a roof where the name of Jesus was often heard, where holy things were constantly brought before one’s eyes, where blasphemy was never heard, where uncleanness would have been put outside the door with the utmost abhorrence! So, if any of you have been the recipients of these marks of God’s favor and yet are not godly—perhaps not even moral— it is clear, from our text, that this goodness of God to you ought to lead you to repentance.
Let me just remind you of your gracious mother, who is now, perhaps, with God in Glory. Your godly father, possibly, lives to sorrow over you. If they could have known, when you were a fair-haired boy at home, that you would always be what you now are, they might have wished that you had never been born! Try to recall those early, happy days— imagine that you can hear again your mother’s earnest pleadings both with and for her boy. Think once more of how you felt when you were sitting at the table on which the family Bible lay open and morning and evening prayer was offered unto the Most High. And, as you do so, may the Lord, by some soft and gentle voice within your conscience, call you to repentance!
Next, it is a mark of the great goodness and forbearance of God as He continues to spare the lives of men. We often marvel that He does not more quickly cut them down as cumberers of the ground! If the first wanton transgression had been followed by a solemn warning and if the next willful sin had involved severe chastisement with the threat that the third offense should be the last, we might not have been surprised—yet God, in His abounding mercy, allows men to sin over and over again, to sin against His Light and knowledge, against rebuke and instruction, against conscience and reason and even against the love of Christ! Singularly enough, God often spares, in an extraordinary manner, the lives of some of the most atrocious rebels against His righteous rule! There are some men who are so wicked that if they were dead, the moral atmosphere of the world would be much purer—yet they live on and seem as if they could not die. Disease after disease has laid them low, for they sin against their own bodies and bring themselves into a truly horrible condition—yet they rise from their sickbed only to sin again more foully than ever!