Judgments and no Repentance

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Revelation 16:1

And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways…

I. JUDGMENTS, APART FROM DIVINE GRACE, MAY PRODUCE A KIND OF REPENTANCE.

1. Judgment may produce a carnal repentance — a repentance that is of the flesh, and after the manner of the sinful nature of men. Though the man changes, he is not savingly changed: he becomes another man, but not a new man. The thunders, and the storms, and the hail, and the noisome sores can produce in men nothing more than a fleshly repentance; and flesh repenting is still flesh, and tends to corruption.

2. And hence, again, it is but a transient repentance. They repent but for a season. While they see the immediate evil of their sin in its results, they cry out as if they really hated sin; but their hatred is only a little tiff, which lasts for a while, and then they make friends with their sins, as Pilate made friends with Herod. Their goodness is as the morning cloud; and as the early dew it passes away.

3. Such a repentance is superficial. It only affects the surface of the man. It does not go to the heart, it is hardly more than skin deep. Beware of a superficial repentance, for God abhors it. God is not mocked; He sees the loathsomeness of the ulcer through the film which seeks to hide it.

4. The awful terrors of God may produce a despairing repentance. What an awful thing it is when the law of God and the terrors of God work upon the conscience, and arouse all a man's fears, and yet he will not fly to Christ I

II. JUDGMENTS DO NOT AND CANNOT OF THEMSELVES PRODUCE A REPENTANCE SUCH AS GIVES GOD GLORY. "They repented not to give Him glory." Now, this not giving God glory is a very important omission, and one which vitiates the whole matter. True repentance gives God glory in many ways. Is yours true repentance or not? That is the question.

1. It reverences and adores God's omniscience. It is a confession of the fact of God's knowledge, and the truthfulness of His statements, for the man says, "O Lord, I am what Thy Word says I am. Before Thee have I sinned. In Thy sight have I done evil. Thou knowest me altogether, and I adore Thine omniscience."

2. The truly penitent gives glory to the righteousness of God in His law. Impenitence rails at the law as too severe, speaks of transgression as a trifle, and of future punishment as cruelty; but the truly repentant soul admires the law, and champions it even against its own self. Do you know all this in your own heart?

3. The sincerely penitent also adores and glorifies the justice of God in His punishment of transgression. Is sin really sinful to you? Do you see its desert of hell? If not, your repentance needs to be repented of.

4. True repentance glorifies the sovereignty of God in His mercy, saying, "Let Him do as He wills, for His will is holy love."

5. Further, the man has repented to the glory of God when he spies out that there is a way by which God can be just and yet the Justifier of the ungodly — when he sees the Lord Jesus Christ, the adorable Son of God, coming in our human nature and becoming the substitute for sinners, and the sacrifice for sin.

6. For, mark you, it glorifies God in one other way — by setting the sinner ever afterwards craving after holiness. "The burnt child dreads the fire"; and the sinner dreads sin when he has been delivered from the flame of it by the Lord Jesus.

III. THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD, APART FROM DIVINE GRACE, MAY, THROUGH OUR HARDNESS OF HEART, INVOLVE US IN GREATER SIN.

1. If God has chastened you very much, until He is saying, "O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee?" then all this chastening which you have despised involves you in deeper sin, because you now sin with a clearer knowledge of what sin really is.

2. To many lives judgments also introduce the element of falsehood. The man vowed that if he recovered from sickness he would fear God. He was sick, and a saint he would be. But when he got well, ah I how much of a saint was he?

3. There are some whose conduct has in it the element of deliberate hatred of God; for these have had time now to see which way evil goes, and yet they follow it. They love sin as sin.

4. This introduces the element of presumption, deliberation, resolve; and when men sin so, there is a talent of lead in the measure of their iniquity, and it weighs exceedingly heavy.

IV. THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD ARE TO BE VIEWED WITH GREAT DISCRETION. He who studies them must do it with solemn care.

1. Judgments tend to good. Do not forget that. They ought to tend to good to you who are exercised by them. How many are aroused to think of better things by sickness in their own persons, or sudden death in others! National judgments are frequently a ministry of grace.

2. Judgments do impress some men. Many will come to hear a sermon just after a dear baby has died, or a brother or father has been taken away. Death whips the careless into thought.

3. Some, no doubt, are sweetly subdued by judgments, when these are qualified with grace. The grace of God working with their afflictions, they bow themselves beneath the chastening hand; and when they do this, it is good for them that they are afflicted.

4. But then, next, still let it be recollected that these things will not work good of themselves. I want you to remember this, because I have known people say, "Well, if I were afflicted I might be converted. If I lay sick I might be saved." Oh, do not think so. Sickness and sorrow of themselves are no helps to salvation. Pain and poverty are not evangelists; disease and despair are not apostles. Look at the lost in hell. Suffering has effected no good in them.

5. Oh, that God would lead you to repent now, before any of His judgments fall upon you! Why should we not repent at once? Surely we ought to repent of doing wrong when we perceive that we are wronging so good a God. Permit me also to say to you how much nobler and sweeter a thing it is to be drawn than to be driven. Must you be beaten to Christ? And then, again, recollect, you can repent now so much more clearly than in the hour of sickness. God helping you, this is a very good hour for repenting.

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