the stars and calls them all by their names — who knows how many tiny creatures there are in the mighty ocean — who notices every grain of dust that floats in the summer air, and is acquainted with every leaf of the forest, can he cease to remember? Perhaps we may answer “No.” Not as to the absolute fact of the committal of the deed; but there are senses in which the expression is entirely accurate. In what sense are we to understand God’s forgetfulness of our sins?
17. First of all, he will not exact punishment for them when we can come before his judgment bar at last. The Christian will have many accusers. The devil will come and say, “That man is a great sinner.” “I do not remember it,” God says. “That man rebelled against you, and cursed you,” the accuser says. “I do not remember it,” God says, “for I have said I will not remember his sins.” Conscience says, “Ah! but Lord, it is true, I did sin against you, and that most grievously.” “I do not remember it,” God says — “I said, I will not remember his sins.” Let all the demons of the pit clamour in God’s ear, and let them vehemently shout out a list of our sins, we may stand boldly forth at that great day, and sing, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” for God does not even remember their sin. The Judge does not remember it, and who then shall punish? Unrighteous as we were; wicked as we have been; yet he has forgotten it all. Who then can bring to remembrance what God has forgotten? He says, “I will cast your sins into the depths of the sea,” not into the shallows where they might be fished up again, but into the depths of the sea, where Satan himself cannot find them. There are no such things as sins recorded against God’s people. Christ has so taken them away, that sin becomes a nonentity to Christians — it is all gone, and through Jesus’ blood they are clean.
18. The second meaning of this is, I will not remember your sins to suspect you. There is a father, and he has a wayward son who went away that he might live a life of looseness and profligacy; but after a while he comes home again in a state of penitence. The father says, “I will forgive you.” But he says next day to his younger son, “There is business to be done at a distant town tomorrow, and here is the money for you to do it with.” He does not trust the returned prodigal with it. “I have trusted him before with money,” says the father to himself, “and he robbed me, and it makes me afraid to trust him again.” But our heavenly Father says, “I will not remember your sins.” He not only forgives the past, but trusts his people with precious talents. He never suspects them. He has never one suspicious thought. He loves them just as much as if they had never gone astray. He will employ them to preach his gospel; he will put them into the Sunday School, and make them servants of his Son: for he says, “I will not remember your sins.”
19. Again: he will not remember in his distribution of the recompence of the reward. The earthly parent will kindly pass over the faults of the prodigal; but you know when that father comes to die, and is about to make his will, the lawyer sitting by his side, he says, “I shall give so much to William, who always behaved well, and my other son shall have String, and my daughter, she shall have so much; but there is that prodigal, I have spent a large sum upon him when he was young, but he wasted what he received, and though I have taken him again into favour, and for the present he is going on well; still I think I must make a little difference between him and the others. I think it would not be fair — though I have forgiven him — to treat him precisely as the rest”; and so the lawyer puts him down for a few hundred pounds, while the others, perhaps, get their thousands. But God will not remember your sins like that; he gives all an inheritance. He will give heaven to the chief of sinners as well as to the chief of saints. When he divides the portion to his children, it may be he will put Mary Magdalene as high as he does Peter, and the thief as high as he does John; yes, the malefactor who died on the cross is as much in the sight of God as the most moral person that ever lived. Here is a blessed forgetfulness. What do you say, poor sinner? Is your heart drawn by a mysterious inspiration to the foot of the cross? Then I thank my Master; for I trust the one object of my life is to win souls for Christ, and if I may be blessed in that, my life shall be happy. Still do you say, “My sins are too great to be forgiven.” No, but oh man, as high as the heaven is above the earth, so great is his mercy above your sins, and so far does his grace exceed your thoughts. Oh, but you say, “He will not accept me.” What then is the meaning of this text — “He is able to save to the uttermost”; or this — “Whoever comes to me I will in nowise cast out”; and again — “Whoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely.” Do you still say, “This does not include me.” Oh do not be so faithless, but rather believe. Oh! had I the power, God knows I would weep myself away in order to win your souls.
But feeble our compassion proves,
And can but weep where most it loves.
I can do nothing but preach God’s gospel; but since the moment Christ forgave me, I cannot help speaking of his love. I turned away from his gospel, and ignored his reproofs. I did not care for his voice or his Word. That blessed Bible lay unread; these knees refused to bend in prayer, and my eyes looked on vanity. Has he not pardoned? Has he not forgiven? Yes. Then sooner may this tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, than cease to proclaim free grace in all its mighty displays of electing, redeeming, pardoning, and saving mercy. Oh! how loud I ought to sing, seeing I am saved from hell, and delivered from condemnation. And if I am saved from hell, why should not you be? Why should I be saved and not another? It was for sinners, remember, that Jesus came. Mary Magdalene, Saul of Tarsus — the very chief of sinners, were accepted, and why do you foolishly conclude that you are cast out? Oh, poor penitent if you perish, you will be the FIRST penitent who ever did so. God give you his blessing, my dear friends, for Christ’s sake. Amen.
The Hope Of Future Bliss
No. 25-1:189. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Evening, May 20, 1855, By C. H. Spurgeon, At Exeter Hall, Strand.
As for me, I will behold your face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with your likeness. {Psalms 17:15}
1. It would be difficult to say to which the gospel owes most, to its friends or to its enemies. It is true, that by the help of God, its friends have done much for it; they have preached it in foreign lands, they have dared death, they have laughed to scorn the terrors of the grave, they have ventured all things for Christ, and so have glorified the doctrine they believed; but the enemies of Christ, unwittingly, have done no little, for when they have persecuted Christ’s servants, they have scattered them abroad, so that they have gone everywhere preaching the Word; indeed, when they have trampled upon the gospel, like a certain herb we read of in medicine, it has grown all the faster: and if we refer to the pages of sacred writ how very many precious portions of it do we owe, under God, to the enemies of the cross of Christ! Jesus Christ would never have preached many of his discourses had not his foes compelled him to answer them; had they not brought objections, we should not have heard the sweet sentences with which he replied. So with the book of Psalms: had not David been severely tried by enemies, had not the foes shot their arrows at him, had they not attempted to malign and blast his character, had they not deeply distressed him, and made him cry out in misery, we would have missed many of those precious experiential utterances we find here, much of that holy song which he penned after his deliverance, and very much of that glorious statement of his trust in the infallible God. We would have lost all this, had it not been wrung from him by the iron hand of anguish. Had it not been for David’s enemies, he would not have penned his Psalms; but when hunted like a partridge on the mountains, when driven like the timid roe before the hunter’s dogs, he waited for awhile, bathed his sides in the pool of Siloah, and panting on the hilltop a little, he breathed the air of heaven and stood and rested his weary limbs. It was then that he gave honour to God; then he shouted aloud to that mighty Jehovah, who for him had gotten the victory. This sentence follows a description of the great troubles which the wicked bring upon the righteous, when he consoles himself with the hope of future bliss. “As for me,” says the patriarch, casting his eyes aloft; “As for me,” said the hunted chieftain of the caves of Engedi — “As for me,” says the once shepherd boy, who was soon to wear a royal diadem — “As for me, I will behold your face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake with your likeness.”
2.