Answering to the Righteous Judgment of God

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, confession of sin, prayer, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God, the unbelieving life Leave a comment

But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; Who will render to every man according to his deeds. – Romans 2:5,6

When we offend a man, if we are right-minded, we not only note the fact with regret, but we sit down and weigh the matter and seek to rectify it; for we would not be unjust to any person, and if we felt that we had been acting unfairly it would press upon our minds until we could make amends. But are there not some of you who have never given half an hour’s consideration to your relation to your God? He has spared you all this while, and yet it has never occurred to you to enter into your chamber and sit down and consider your conduct towards Him. It would seem to be too much trouble even to think of your Creator. His longsuffering leads you to repentance, but you have not repented; in fact, you have not thought it worth your while to consider the question at all: you have thought it far more important to enquire, “What shall I eat and what shall I drink?” Bread and broadcloth have shut out the thought of God. Thou think that God is altogether such an one as thyself, and that He will wink at thy transgression and cover up thy sin; but thou shalt not find it so. That base thought proves that thou despisest His longsuffering. Ah me, you will stand at His judgment bar before long-and then? Perhaps ere this week is finished you may have to answer, not to me, but unto Him that sits upon the throne; therefore, I do implore you now, for the first time give this matter thought. Despise no longer the goodness and longsuffering of God…Will you not care about the saving of your own souls? Oh, strange infatuation-that men will not consent to be themselves saved; but foolishly, madly, hold out against the mercy of God which leads them to repentance. Oh, that hearts may be touched with pity for their slighted Saviour, that they may seek His face! Here is the way of salvation: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” ~ C. H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1714.cfm

God’s Goodness, Forbearance and Longsuffering Toward Sinners

Sherry Attributes of God, promises, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

Or despisest thou the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering..? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God… – Romans 2:4,5

Hear me, unconverted sinner: the sin of which thou art suspected is this, -“Despisest thou the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering?” The Lord’s goodness ought to be admired and to be adored, and dost thou despise it? His goodness ought to be wondered at and told as a marvel in the ears of others, and dost thou despise it? That I may rake thy conscience a little, lend me thine ear.

Some despise God’s goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, because they never even gave a thought to it. God has given you life to keep you in being, and He has indulged you with His kindness, but it has not yet occurred to you that this patience is at all remarkable or worthy of the smallest thanks. You have been a drunkard, have you? a swearer? a Sabbath-breaker? a lover of sinful pleasure? Perhaps not quite so; but still you have forgotten God altogether, and yet He has abounded in goodness to you: is not this a great wrong? The Lord saith, Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but these My creatures do not know, My favoured ones do not consider. Why, you have no such forbearance with others as God has had with you. You would not keep a dog if it never followed at your heel but snarled at you: you would not even keep a potter’s vessel if it held no water and was of no service to you; you would break it in pieces and throw it on the dunghill. As for yourself, you are fearfully and wonderfully made, both as to your body and as to your soul, and yet you have been of no service to your Maker, nor even thought of being of service to Him. Still, He has spared you all these years, and it has never occurred to you that there has been any wonderful forbearance in it. Assuredly, O man, thou despisest the longsuffering of thy God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1714.cfm

Grieving the Sovereign God

Sherry Attributes of God, confession of sin, prayer, Sovereignty of God, the unbelieving life Leave a comment

Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering..? – Romans 2:4

“What the eye does not see the heart does not rue,” is a truthful proverb; but every transgression is committed in the very presence of God, so that penitent David cried, “Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.” Transgression is committed in the sight of God, from whose eyes nothing is hidden. Remember also, that the Lord never can forget; before His eyes all things stand out in clear light, not only the things of to-day, but all the transgressions of a life. Yet for all this He doth forbear. With evil reeking before His face, He is slow to anger, and waiteth that He may be gracious.

Some are patient because they are powerless: they bear and forbear because they cannot well help themselves; but it is not so with God. Had He but willed it, you had been swept into hell; only a word from Him and the impenitent had fallen in the wilderness, and their spirits would have passed into the realms of endless woe. In a moment the Lord could have eased Himself of His adversary; He could have stopped that flippant tongue and closed that lustful eye in an instant. That wicked heart would have failed to beat if God had withdrawn His power, and that rebellious breath would have ceased also. Had it not been for longsuffering you unbelievers would long since have known what it is to fall into the hands of an angry God. Will you continue to grieve the God who so patiently bears with you?

Here let us pause; and oh, that each one who is still unsaved would sing most sincerely the words of Watts:-

“Lord, we have long abused Thy love,
Too long indulged our sin,
Our aching hearts e’en bleed to see
What rebels we have been.

“No more, ye lusts, shall ye command,
No more will we obey;
Stretch out, O God, Thy conqu’ring hand,
And drive Thy foes away.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1714.cfm

God’s Riches Despised?

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering..? – Romans 2:4

Our apostle adds to goodness and forbearance the riches of “longsuffering.” We draw a distinction between forbearance and longsuffering. Forbearance has to do with the magnitude of sin; longsuffering with the multiplicity of it: forbearance has to do with present provocation; longsuffering relates to that provocation repeated and continued for a length of time. Oh, how long doth God suffer the ill manners of men! Forty years long was He grieved with that generation whose carcasses fell in the wilderness. Has it come to forty years yet with you, dear hearer? Possibly it may have passed even that time, and a half-century of provocation may have gone into eternity to bear witness against you. What if I should even have to say that sixty and seventy years have continued to heap up the loads of their transgressions, until the Lord saith, “I am pressed down under your sins; as a cart that is full of sheaves I am pressed down under you.” Yet for all that, here you are on praying ground and pleading terms with God; here you are where yet the Saviour reigns upon the throne of grace; here you are where mercy is to be had for the asking, where free grace and dying love ring out their charming bells of invitation to joy and peace! Oh, the riches of His goodness, and forbearance, and longsuffering. Three-fold is the claim: will you not regard it? Can you continue to despise it? …If God were a tyrant, if He were unrighteous or unkind, it were not so much amiss that men stood out against Him; but when His very name is love, and when He manifests the bowels of a Father towards His wandering children it is shameful that He should be so wantonly provoked…Every single minute of our life is cheered with the tender kindness of God, and every spot is gladdened with His love. I wonder that the Lord does not sweep away the moral nuisance of a guilty race from off the face of earth. Man’s sin must have been terribly offensive to God from day to day, and yet still He shows kindness, love, forbearance. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1714.cfm

God’s Forbearance

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, Sovereignty of God, the unbelieving life Leave a comment

Or despisest thou the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering..? – Romans 2:4

Forbearance comes in when men, having offended, God withholds the punishment that is due to them; when men, having been invited to mercy, have refused it, and yet God continues to stretch out His hands, and invite them to come to Him. Patient endurance of offenses and insults has been manifested by God to many of you, who now hear these words of warning. The Lord knows to whom I speak, and may He make you, also, know that I am speaking to you, even to you. Some men have gone back to the very sin of which for a while they repented; they have suffered for their folly but have turned again to it with suicidal determination. They are desperately set on their own ruin, and nothing can save them. The burnt child has run to the fire again; the singed moth has plunged again into the flame of the candle; who can pity such self-inflicted miseries? They are given over to perdition, for they will not be warned. They have returned to the haunt of vice, though they seemed to have been snatched from the deep ditch of its filthiness. They have wantonly and wilfully returned to their cups, though the poison of former draughts is yet burning in their veins. Yet, despite this folly, God shows forbearance towards them.

Did you ever think what is included in the riches of forbearance. There are quick tempered individuals who only need to be a little provoked, and hard words and blows come quick and furious: but, oh, the forbearance of God when He is provoked to His face by ungodly men! By men, I mean, who hear His word, and yet refuse it! They slight His love, and yet He perseveres in it. Justice lays its hand on the sword, but mercy holds it back in its scabbard. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1714.cfm

The End of the Righteous Desired

Sherry sermon Leave a comment

You who are King of kings and Lord of lords, we worship You. Before Jehovah’s awful throne we bow with sacred joy.

Sermon Text

It is a Wonder of Wonders

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 2 Comments

Or despisest thou the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering..? – Romans 2:4

O impenitent man, you are placed in the very focus of Christian light, and yet you follow evil! Will you not think of this? Time was when a man would have to work for years to earn enough money to buy a Bible. There were times when he could not have earned one even with that toil; now the Word of God lies upon your table, you have a copy of it in almost every room of your house; is not this a boon from God? This is the land of the open Bible, and the land of the preached Word of God; in this you prove the riches of God’s goodness. Do you despise this wealth of mercy? What is more, you have been favoured with a tender conscience. When you do wrong you know it, and smart for it. What means those wakeful nights after you have yielded to a temptation? What means that miserable feeling of shame? that fever of unrest? You find it hard to stifle the inward monitor, and difficult to resist the Spirit of God. Your road to perdition is made peculiarly hard; do you mean to follow it at all costs, and go over hedge and ditch to hell?

Be it never forgotten that sin is to God much more intolerable than it is to us. He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. Things which we call little sins are great and grievous evils to Him: they do, as it were, touch the apple of His eye. “Oh, do not,” He says, “do not this abominable thing that I hate!” His Spirit is grieved and vexed with every idle word and every sensual thought; and hence it is a wonder of wonders that a God so sensitive of sin, a God so able to avenge Himself of His adversaries, a God who knows the abundance of human evil, and marks it all, should nevertheless exhibit riches of goodness and forbearance and longsuffering. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1714.cfm