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TOPIC: Spurgeon - C.H. - God's Goodness Leading to Repentance (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Section 1 of 3
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I. My object, 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 eye, 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 favourable regard, 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 ever 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 wilful sin had involved severe chastisement with the threatening that the third offence 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 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 sick-bed only to sin again more foully than ever. How is it that such sinners are spared, while an earnest and zealous foreign missionary sickens, and dies, and an eminent saint, who did but pass through a street where fever raged, was stricken with the fell disease, and speedily carried off by it? If I understand why the miscreants are spared when the godly are taken,..and I am sure I do, for my text instructs me,..the goodness of God is manifested in order to lead such sinners to repentance. He spares them that they may turn unto him. The sailor who, a little while before, was blaspheming the name of the Lord; and then working at the pumps, with all his might, to try to save the ship, sees the vessel go down, but he clings to a spar that floats upon the raging sea. His shipmates have been sinking all around him, but he finds himself washed up high and dry upon a rock. To what end, seaman, are you spared? Is it not that the goodness of God may lead to repentance even you, who could scarcely speak without an oath? God means, I trust, that you should, henceforth, live a new life, and serve him as you have never yet done. And the soldier, too, I have heard of him, in the day of battle, when the bullets have whistled close by his ears, and comrade after comrade has fallen at his side. I remember speaking, many years ago, with one who rode in that celebrated charge at Balaclava when the saddles were being emptied right and left, yet on to the end he rode, and back again through the valley of death; and, though a stranger to him, I could not help laying my hand upon his shoulder, and claiming him for the Christ who had spared his life in that terrible time. Am I addressing anyone who has been in imminent peril of any sort, ..by railway accident of in shipwreck, in battle or in storm, when it seemed as if you must die, yet you did not die? Then, surely, your preservation means that God was saying to grim Death, "Spare him, for he is mine. I intend to save his soul as well as to spare his life." If that is the case with any of you, God's goodness is meant to lead you to repentance.
Nor is this all,..though there is great mercy in a godly parentage, and in life preserved in times of peril;..for, sometimes, ungodly men enjoy, for many years, the privilege of perfect health. "I never had a day's illness in my life," says one; yet he has not been careful of his constitution; on the contrary, he has done much to injure it. Another says, "I never missed a day's work, and never was kept away from business, by suffering of any kind; I scarcely know what aches and pains mean." Well, friend, God deals with you, in that respect, in a very different way from the treatment he metes out to some of us, who, nevertheless, try to serve him. Surely, you ought seriously to think of this matter, and to say to yourself, "He does not even give me as much of the rod as he gives to his own children. It cannot be that he loves me better than he loves them; it must be because I am not his child. As a man does not punish another person's boy, but leaves him to go his own way, so I must not reckon that God is specially showing his love to me in this long-continued health and strength, and I must solemnly ask myself, ÔAm I his child?' And then, on the other hand, I must say to him, ÔDost thou, O Lord, indulge me with health and strength? Dost thou favour me with this long immunity from pain,..I, who never lived to serve thee, and never even thanked thee for all thy goodness to me? Then am I thoroughly ashamed of myself, and I implore thee, O my gracious Preserver, to forgive my forgetfulness and ingratitude, and to receive me, and to put me among thy children!'"
Nor is this all, for I know some ungodly people who are greatly prospering in this world. When they started in life, perhaps things were a little hard with them; and they thought that, if God would but give them enough to eat and drink, it would be a great mercy. Possibly, they soon found a position which just suited their capacities; but, ere long, they began to aspire to something higher, and God gave it to them. So it has gone on until now, they have pretty nearly all that they could wish to have. Well, dear friends, if this has been your experience, recollect that all has come to you from the Giver of every good and perfect gift. Each one of these blessings has been sent to you marked with some such message as this from the Lord himself, "Will not my creature consider what return should be rendered to me for this mercy, and that mercy, and the other mercy, which I have given to him,..more even than I have given to some of the best of my own people;..will he not turn unto me, and bless the Giver of all this goodness to him?"