Barriers Obliterated
“I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee.” — Isaiah xliv. 22.
WE noticed, as we read the chapter, the extreme folly of a man attempting to make a god for himself, or to worship anything as God save only the one living and true God. We consider the heathen to be very foolish for worshipping their hideous idols. Yet, you know, to be an idolater, a man need not make an image of wood, or stone, or gold, for he can worship his own thoughts, his own ideas, his own notions; and every man, whose great object in life is anything less than the glory of God, really is a worshipper of idols. If that statement be true, — and I challenge anyone to prove that it is not, — London swarms with spiritual idolaters. He, who lives to himself, practically worships himself. That, you know, is a very extreme form of idolatry, for even the heathen do not bow down and worship themselves; but there are many, who do not call themselves heathen, who do that. He who lives only to make money, — what is he but a worshipper of the golden calf? And he who cares continually for the opinion of his fellow-men, — what does he worship but that shameless creature, Fame? He lives upon the breath from other men’s nostrils, and counts it worth his while to make himself a slave that he may win the applause of his fellow-slaves. If we live to thee, great God, we live wisely ; for thou alone art self -existent, and thou canst reward us and bless us; but if we live for anything less than thee, we live foolishly, since, even if we could attain the objects after which we seek, they would soon pass away from us, or else, by death, we should pass away from them. For an immortal spirit, there is nothing worth living for but to please God. “To glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever,” is the only worthy end of mortal man.
Now, beloved friends, it is strange that this, which seems so simple, is continually being forgotten; indeed, by the mass of mankind, it is not remembered at all. They go their way, and burn their sacrifices and their incense to this idol and to that, but God is not at all in their thoughts; and the worst of this evil is, that even his own people have far too great a tendency to this kind of idolatry. Even those who are born again, and who love the Lord, find within themselves an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God, and I feel sure that I am addressing many who, to a greater or less degree, have been guilty of turning away from the only true God; and it is for them that my text is meant: “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee.” I am speaking, of course, to those who really are God’s people, but who have lost somewhat of the fervour of their love, and who have not been truly faithful to him; but while I am specially addressing them, I hope that a good many others, who could not yet say that they are the Lord’s people, will, nevertheless, perceive that the door of God’s mercy is also open to them, and that they will enter in even while I am setting it open for the Lord’s wandering children. Recollect that, if you do get in, you will never be put out. Whether I know that I have a right to go through the gate of mercy, or not, if I once get in, I am in, and I shall never be turned out. If I am only like a dog that goes into a house uninvited, yet, so long as I am once inside, there is no power that can expel me, for the Lord Jesus himself said, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”
There are four things in our text that are worthy of notice. First, the dividing medium: a cloud of sins, — a thick cloud of transgressions; secondly, its complete removal: “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins;” thirdly, the tender command: “Return unto me;” and, fourthly, the sacred claim: “for I have redeemed thee.” I must speak briefly upon each point.
I. First, here is AN INTERPOSING AND DIVIDING MEDIUM: a cloud of sins. A vapour, says the Hebrew; and, then, a thick cloud.
God’s people ought always to dwell in fellowship with their God. There ought to be nothing between the renewed heart and God to prevent joyful and hallowed fellowship; but it is not so. Sometimes, a cloud comes between, — a cloud of sin; and, whenever that cloud of sin comes between us and God, it speedily chills us. Our delight in God is no longer manifest; we have little or no zeal in his service, or joy in his worship. Beneath that cloud, we feel like men who are frozen; and, at the same time, darkness comes over us. We get into such a sad state that we hardly know whether we are God’s people, or not. Sin comes between us and our God, and all our joy departs. To be near to God, is to live in the sunlight; but to sin against God, soon brings us under very heavy gloom. We are like men in a thick London fog; we can scarcely see our own hands, and we have, sometimes, to stand still in utter astonishment, and ask, “Where am I, and what am I? I thought I was a child of God; but if I were to die just now, where should I go?” Sin is the cloud which comes between us and God, and chills and darkens us.
Beside that, it threatens us. A great black cloud over one’s head makes us wonder what may be in it. It may be charged with tempest, and may burst upon our devoted heads. Backslider, when you get away from God, I do not wonder that you begin to be in distress and alarm. The thought of death distresses you. At one time, you could have met death with a calm countenance; but you could not do so now. You begin to have thoughts of judgment, and of eternal wrath and destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. You know you do, for he who is under the frown of God because of sin never knows what woe may come out of that dark cloud. He is full of alarm and distress, and has no true rest of heart. Affliction seems to be the judgment of God upon you who are in this sad state; and your present distress of mind, great as it is, seems to be nothing compared with what you think will come upon you. You fear that you will be utterly deserted, — that God’s mercy will be taken from you for ever, and that he will be favourable to you no more. It is your sins that look so black upon you; you have the dark side of them turned to you; and can you wonder that it is so if you have been getting away from God, loving the world, and acting like a fool in forsaking the Most High?
Remember, dear friend, if you are in that condition, that clouds are earthborn things. There is not a drop of water in the cloud yonder but what went up, first of all, from the earth or the sea; and so, your present darkness and distress have all arisen from your sins. You say that you go to the house of God, and get no comfort. Recollect the times when you used to go there, and pay but little attention; and when you used to go home, and pick holes in what you had heard, — finding fault with your spiritual food, like naughty children do with food for the body when they have no appetite, and cannot eat this, and do not like that; — like them, you need to be put on “short commons” till you get your spiritual appetite back again. Do you remember how it used to be with you? You had bright days once, and happy times; but, then, you used to be very careful of your walk and conversation. At that time, you were almost afraid to put one foot before another, for fear you should not tread in your Lord’s footprints. You used to watch your words; you were very particular as to the company you kept; you would not consort with worldlings then; but, now, you can do, without compunction, a thousand things which you would not have done then. Things for which you have severely censured others, you now tolerate in yourself; and now you say, “There is a thick black cloud over my sky.” Do you wonder that there is? With all those bogs and morasses of sin, is there any marvel that the mists of doubt and fear should have arisen around you? Your iniquities have separated between you and your God. Ah! there are some of you, who used to be very fervent and earnest in divine things. You used to speak of Christ to others, and you were even the means of bringing some souls to Jesus; yet now you have yourselves turned aside from him. Oh, it is a sad thing when one who used to be a Sunday-school teacher has forgotten the lessons he taught to his boys, or when the man, who was once a street-preacher, or even the pastor of a Christian church, has himself become a profaner of the Sabbath; yet such things do happen.
I will mention only one more thought under this head, — a very encouraging one. It is this, though your sins are like clouds, which chill you, and darken you, and though those clouds are of your own making, yet recollect that the sun is not affected by the clouds. Though hidden for a while, he is still shining. This is a most comforting truth, but be careful not to pervert it. The everlasting love of God to his people is not changed even by their wanderings and their sins. The child thinks that the clouds have destroyed the sun; but high up above the clouds he is as bright as ever. Ever glowing like a mighty furnace art thou, O sun; and our damps and fogs quench not thy brilliance! And, backslider, the love of God, the grace of God, the mercy of God, the power of God to bless, and the willingness of God to receive you back again remain just the same as ever they were notwithstanding the density of these horrible vapours of sin and transgression. Do not, I pray you, make an ill use of this great truth. If you do so, you will give sure evidence that you are no child of God, but a base hypocrite; but if there is any spiritual life within you, this blessed truth will tend to bring upon you compunction of conscience to think that you should be offending against a God, whose love is still the same notwithstanding all your backsliding, and who does not turn aside from his covenant, nor cast away his people, whom he did foreknow.
II. Now, secondly, we are to consider THE COMPLETE REMOVAL OF THIS BARRIER: “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins.”
Nobody but God can get at the clouds, and drive them from the firmament of heaven. There they are, floating high above our heads, and no known human power can remove them. So it is with your darkness and doubts, if you have fallen into sin. You cannot get rid of them. You may sit down under them in despondency, and weep, and be almost in despair; but there they are, and there they will remain. You may go to the so-called priests, if you like, as the poor African goes to the pretended rain-maker, and asks him to bring rain when he wants it; and the priest can do just as much for you as the rain-maker can do for the African, certainly not any more. He and the rain-maker are a couple of deceivers, so do not you be duped by either of them. There is no one who can forgive sins save God only, so do not you be deluded into the belief that there is any other forgiver in the whole universe.
But what a mercy it is that God can remove these clouds of sin! He can do it, and do it effectually. How quickly God sweeps the sky clear of clouds! Sometimes, in this fickle climate, we have all sorts of weather mixed up together, so that we experience spring, summer, autumn, and winter in the course of a few hours. You have seen the clouds hanging thick and heavy all over the sky; you have passed into your house, and said, “It will be a very wet day;” but you have hardly gone indoors before there has been a clear blue sky above you, with not a cloud the size of a man’s hand to be seen anywhere. Thus can God quickly sweep away the clouds, and he can just as quickly take away sin. Before you can even get out of this building, you, who are groaning under a sense of sin, may be completely delivered from it. You, who now see the clouds of your transgressions and iniquities hanging black above your heads, may, in a moment, be able to see the clear sky of God’s forgiving love with not a trace of all your transgression and iniquity.
The mercy is, that, when God drives away these clouds from us, though we may see other clouds, we shall never see those black ones any more. When the Lord takes away his people’s sins, they are gone, and gone for ever. They shall not be remembered against them any more for ever. Whenever I get upon this topic, I feel as though I should like to keep on speaking upon it, and go no further. The glorious forgiving love of God is an indescribable theme, and it is altogether inexhaustible. We may continue to talk about it year after year, but we shall never get to the end of it; yea, even throughout eternity, we shall never be able to tell all the splendours of the pardoning mercy of our gracious God. O backslider, he can take away all thy sin this very moment! He can shine forth upon thee like the sun in his strength; and, then, every shadow and cloud shall be driven from thy soul.
Now I am getting near to the very heart of the text, but I have not quite reached it yet, for the glory of it is that the Lord has already done this great work of grace. The text does not say, “I can blot out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions;” nor, “I will blot them out;” but, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions.” It is done, fully done, for ever done. Hearest thou this, poor wanderer? Perhaps thou sayest, “I cannot come back to God, for I have been so long a wanderer from him, and my sins still lie heavily upon me.” But, my brother, my sister, the Lord has forgiven thee all thy sin. He says, “Think no more about it, for I have blotted it all out.” If thou art indeed a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, thou art like a child who has offended his father, — run away from home, perhaps. In a distant land, in sin and sorrow, that son is longing to return, and he gets a message from his father saying, “All is forgiven; come home.” It is so with thee, thou wandering child of God, if thou hast repented of thy wanderings, all is forgiven; even the guilt of this backsliding of thine was laid upon Christ. If thou art believing in him, that is the clearest possible proof that all thy transgressions were laid upon him, and that he has made a full and complete atonement for them all. Even while thou art coming back to him, all thy sin is forgiven through the superabundant mercy which moves him to run to meet thee even as the father of the prodigal ran to meet his son; and before he falls upon thy neck, before thou hast begun to confess thy transgressions in his ear, he has already blotted them all out. What sayest thou to this wondrous display of sovereign grace, which he himself bids us proclaim to you? He knows whether he has forgiven thy sin, or not, and it is he who says, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins.” Often and often have I mused upon this great truth, — The Lord has loved me with an everlasting love, and he has washed me in the precious blood of Christ, and forgiven me all my transgressions; and whenever I think of that, I feel my heart drawn still more closely towards him.
Unbelief will never bring you rest of heart, but faith will do so. I am speaking now to any of you who have wandered quite a long way from Christ. I may be even addressing some member of the Tabernacle who has not lately been very regular in hearing the Word. You have fallen into a very lean, sad state, my brother; you are finding fault with other people, but it is yourself who ought to be blamed. Many things do not suit you now as they used to do, and you lay upon others the blame which you ought yourself to bear. You could sit on any hard seat once; but you need a soft cushion now. You could stand in any hot place to hear the gospel in those days; but you are too grand a gentleman to do that now. I do not know what we can do to get you into a good temper; for, after all, you are the one who is wrong. You know it is so; yet, notwithstanding that, I want to whisper in your ear that your Father is still your Father, that Christ is still your Saviour, that the Holy Spirit is still your Guide and Teacher; so, come home. Stay no longer away because you fear your Father’s frown. You have grieved him, you have vexed his Holy Spirit, you have dishonoured his Son; yet he has not changed. Still do his bowels yearn over you, still does he cry, “How can I give you up?” and he will not. Come back to him, for it.is his mercy that is calling you.
III. I have already passed into the third division of my subject almost before I was aware of it. We have already seen that there is a barrier between some souls and God, and that the Lord can clear that barrier away; now we are to consider THE TENDER COMMAND: “’Return unto me.’ The great barrier, that separated us, is removed; so let us not be divided from one another any longer.”
Perhaps, my brother, you have thought that God had left off loving you; but he has not. You have begun to quarrel with God because you imagined that he had a quarrel with you; but it is not so, for he loves you still; it was your sin that he hated. Kindness is in his heart, and words of infinite love are on his lips, still. Surely, if you know that the sin, which has come like a great mountain chain between you and himself, is regarded by him as mere vapour, — a cloud, — which he has removed by the power of his almighty grace, you will give heed to him when he cries to you, “Come back. Come back. Come back. Bygones shall be bygones. The guilt of all your wanderings I have laid on the great Scapegoat s head. I have drawn my pen through the record of your sin in my book of remembrance, and have struck it all out. Come back. Come back.” When, in your soul, you hear God speak to you thus, do not your hearts at once respond, “Lord, since thou hast taken away the barrier that separated us, we will come back to thee, and we will come back this very hour”?
When he says, “Return,” he means that he wants you to give up that which has grieved him. You cannot come back to God, you know, bringing your love of sin with you. Some of you professors, who are, I hope, still the Lord’s people, fall into various evil ways which grieve the Holy Spirit, and then the black clouds form a great barrier between you and your God. He requires you to give up that which has caused the dark clouds to cover your sky. What is it that has brought about this sad result? I have known some professors fall into a sad state through keeping ill company; they have associated with some very fascinating person who has been able greatly to amuse them, but who certainly could not edify them, for he knew nothing savingly of the things of God. I have known some professors go, by degrees, into very gross sin, as the result of giving way to the habit of tippling; they would not like to be called drunkards, but I am sure I do not know what other name I could give them. And some nominally Christian tradespeople do things, in their business, which they would not like to have generally known. They seem to forget that God sees them, and knows all about them. Now, any sin, that is known and tolerated, will soon separate a Christian from his God as to any conscious enjoyment of his presence. Be very careful, then, dear brother, as to anything which is grieving your God; and though it should be a loss or a cross to you to give it up, do not hesitate a moment, but give it up, and come back to your Heavenly Father. Nothing can compensate for the loss of his presence; and you cannot have his presence so long as you continue to hug your sin; therefore, give up the sin which he hates, especially as he has forgiven you in the past. If a young man has left his father’s house in anger, but his father writes to him, and says, “William, the trouble is all over. My boy, I fully forgive you, so come back to me;” will he still stay away? Let us hope not; and, dear child of God, your Father says to you, “Return unto me, for I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and as a cloud, thy sins.” So, give up your sin, seeing that God has blotted it all out.
The Lord’s gracious invitation, “Return unto me,” also means, “Come back, and love me. See how I have loved you. I have already forgiven you your sin, you who are, indeed, my child, but whose faith has almost disappeared. Though you have provoked me by your sin, I still love you. Though there is nothing lovely about you, yet still I love you, for my name’s sake, and for my Son’s sake, will you not love me?” After such pleading, can you keep on in this cold-hearted state towards your God? Some of you professors make us weep when we think of how you live, and how far you get away from your God. I do pray that he may cast the cords of his almighty love about you, and bind you to himself, so that you cannot escape from him if you would, and would not if you could.
The Lord also means, when he says, “Return unto me,” “Return again to your old joys.” Oh, you who have got away from the sunlight, through making your sins into a thick cloud, come back into the sunlight again! I would like to refresh the memories of some of you, who are here, as to the happy times you once had. All, then, you were the people who loved the prayer-meeting. How sweet the gatherings of the saints were to you! Do you not also recollect your little room, where, kneeling by your bedside, you had such communion with God that, although you are very cold now, you never can quite forget that holy fervour? You were not a hypocrite, were you? You know you were not. Oh, how your feet used to trip along as you went up to the house of God with the multitude that kept holy day! How earnestly you used to tell others of the joys of true religion! Possibly, you say, “Do not remind us of that joy, for we have lost it.” Yes, but you can have it all back again. God can give you once more the years which the locusts have eaten. Those wasted days, those joys which have been starved to death, — you shall have them back again, and you shall yet lift up your voice with the sweet singer of Israel, and praise the Lord that his mercy endureth for ever. Yes, though you feel like guilty Peter, when he denied his Lord, you may yet come back like Peter, and be all the stronger for your past bitter experience. Your Heavenly Father bids you return, and I, your brother in Christ, would stretch out my hand to you, and say, “Come, my brother; come, my sister; —
“’Come let us to the Lord our God,
With contrite hearts return.’”
IV. My last point is THE SACRED CLAIM WHICH BACKS UP THE GRACIOUS INVITATION: “Return unto me,” saith the Lord, “for I have redeemed thee.”
I do not know whether you see the meaning of this, but I think I do. It is this: “I have loved you so much that I redeemed you with the blood of my dear Son; and, having loved you so much in the ages past, I love you still. Come back to me. I did not make a mistake when I first loved you, through which I shall have to change the object of my choice. I knew all about you from eternity; all that you ever would be or could be, I knew it; I saw it all with my foreseeing eye, and yet I loved you, and bought you with the precious blood of Jesus, my only-begotten and well-beloved Son, and I love you still. Therefore, return unto me; return, return.”
But even that does not convey the full force of this gracious invitation. It further means this: “I have a right to you. I have bought you; you are mine; and you shall not go away from me.” Come back to me, for redemption’s sign, the blood-mark, is upon you. Many of you bear in your very bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus; for you have been immersed in water, in the name of the Sacred Trinity, on profession of your being dead to the world, and alive unto the Christ. It is utterly impossible for you to get that water-mark off you; it is upon you for ever. And Christ has marked you as his own with his own blood, and he will not let you go. Listen to what he says about the matter: “Behold these wounds in my head, and hands, and feet, and side. I bought you with the very blood of my heart; so, do you think that I will lose you? Did I bow my head in unspeakable agony, and cry, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ and shall I lose those whom I purchased by my death?” Who is he that shall snatch out of the hands of Christ those whom he has bought with his own blood? Shall the arch-enemy come and steal away the sheep of Christ? Shall the lion of hell devour even one stray lamb out of his flock? Nay, verily; our greater David shall tear him in pieces first; and deliver every one of the innumerable souls that his blood has redeemed. Buy them with his death, and then leave them to be damned? I find no such sham redemption in this blessed Book, nor would I care the turn of a farthing for the value of it; but the redemption which Jesus Christ has wrought is a redemption that does redeem. He has paid too great a price for his people for him ever to lose those whom he purchased with his blood. So he says to each one of you, who have believed in him. but who have gone astray from him, “‘Return unto me, for I have redeemed thee;’ and I will have thee. Thy league with hell is broken, and thy covenant with death is disannulled. Come back to me. Come back to me. Thou wilt never find rest anywhere else. Thou mayest go into sin, but thou shalt never find pleasure in it, neither shalt thou be content with it. If thou wert one of the swine, thou mightest fill thy belly with the husks that they eat; but thou art my child, and thou must starve till thou comest back to my table. For thee there shall be no mirth, no music, no feast, no robe, no joy, until thou comest back to me. I have redeemed thee, and I will hedge up thy way with thorns until thou dost return unto me; but I will not let thee go. I will turn thee out of thy wicked paths. I will beat thee as with blows of a cruel one; I will smite thee with affliction upon affliction; but I will have thee, I will not suffer thee to perish. Return ere this rough treatment is meted out to thee. Return at love’s gentle wooings, and with mercy’s tender voice, for I have redeemed thee. ‘It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.’ I have thee in hand, and I can do with thee as I please; and thou shalt, after all, be drawn back among the rest of my people.” Go, poor dove, and fly over the wild waste of waters. Look North, South, East, West, but thou shalt never see a log floating on the waves upon which thou canst rest. That foul raven, out yonder, can light upon a corpse, and both rest and feed upon the carrion; but thou canst not. Fly whither thou wilt, O dove, there is but one rest for thee, and Noah alone can tell thee where it is. It is within the ark. But dost thou refuse to return to that ark? Dost thou still fly, and fly, and fly, till thy wings are weary, and thou canst scarcely keep thyself above the flood? Fly on, on, on, till thy pinions, at last, cannot bear thee up any longer; but, oh, if thou wilt be wise, fly with thy failing pinions to yonder ark, and hide thyself there, ‘for there alone is rest to be found. Thou shalt come there, thou must come there, for there is rest for thee nowhere else. All, young man, you did not think of this when you came in to this service; you scarcely know why you came, for you meant to go with evil companions! But if Christ has really bought you with his blood, he will have you; so, in his name, I do arrest thee, and bid thee trust in him.
“Thus the eternal counsel ran
‘Almighty grace, arrest that man.’”
You are arrested in the name of the great King. Pause and turn to him, and live. Perhaps you remember how Colonel Gardiner, on the very night when he had made a sinful appointment, was convicted of sin, brought to the Saviour, and became one of the most earnest followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. My dear Lord, with his sorrowful countenance, looks into the faces of some of you. I do not know who it may be, but he does; and, lifting up his pierced hand, he lays it upon one here, and another there, and he says, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee.” The Lord bless you, for Jesus Christ’s sake! Amen.