A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, January 21, 1877, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.  

Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but you have in love for my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for you have cast all my sins behind your back. [Isa 38:17]

1. Hezekiah’s recovery is a notable encouragement for prayer. If ever there was a case in the world where it seemed impossible that prayer could be of any avail, it was that of Hezekiah. It was perceivable by everyone around him that he was terminally ill. Why then think of prayer? The case was fatal. Would it not expose prayer to derision if such a matter were taken before the mercy seat? Moreover, God’s own word spoken by his servant the prophet had been given: “Set your house in order: for you shall die, and not live.” What could be the use of prayer after that? Might it not be regarded as an impertinent interference with the known will of the Lord? Yet, brethren, the proverb says that hunger breaks through stone walls; and so the desire to live on the king’s part drove him to pray: through all arguments and reasonings Hezekiah’s prayer broke through to the throne of God. He turned his face to the wall in more than one sense on that occasion, for it seemed as if a wall stood in front of him, and shut out all hope for life: yet he turned his face to it, and prayed his way through it.

2. Notice well his success. He lived fifteen years longer in answer to his entreaties. Brother, pray if you are between the jaws of death and hell. Pray, brother, if all hope seems to be utterly slain; indeed, and if you can put your finger on passages of God’s own word which apparently condemn you, still pray. Whether your fears have contorted those threatening passages or not, though many of them frown upon you, still pray. If you must perish, perish with your hand on the horn of the altar. Never believe your case to be utterly hopeless as long as you can plead with God. No harm can come from your supplication, but good must come from it in some form or other. If God does not prolong life in answer to prayer, as often as he may not, or no one would ever die, yet still he may give a greater blessing than continued earthly existence; and if it is a greater blessing in God’s judgment, it is better for us to receive it than to have the precise thing we have craved for. In all cases “pray without ceasing.” The mercy seat once stood within the veil where no one could approach it except at one appointed time in the year; but now the veil is torn from top to bottom, and you may come to it whenever you wish. Therefore I charge you to come boldly to the throne of the heavenly grace in every time of need; yes, draw near in the darkest night, and in the most wintry season, when God seems to have forgotten to be gracious, and when you think he will be favourable no more. “Men ought always to pray and not to faint.” Pray in the teeth of difficulty, pray though impossibility seems to stand in the way, pray against death and the devil; pray like Manasseh in the low dungeon, and like Jonah out of the belly of hell. Pray against conscience and carnal reason; I was going to say even pray against your terrifying interpretation of God’s word itself, for you must surely have misread it if you have thought that it forbids you to pray: it cannot be so, since Jehovah’s glorious memorial is that he is the God who hears prayer. He has never said to the seed of Jacob, seek my face in vain. He may say, and he knows his own meaning when he says it, “You shall die, and not live,” and yet he may afterwards declare, “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears: behold, I will add fifteen years to your days.” He will be favourable to the voice of your supplication.

3. That lesson having been learned, we shall now proceed to consider Hezekiah’s prayer in detail. May God grant that from his experience we may derive instruction, and if in its bitterness we have already had fellowship with the royal supplicant, may the Lord grant to us to have communion with him in its sweeter part, so that we also may feel our souls brought up from the pit of corruption to celebrate the praises of our pardoning God.

4. I see in the text three things to think about at this time: the first is a healthful bitterness — “Behold, for peace I had great bitterness,” the second is delivering love — “But you have in love for my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption,” and the third is absolute pardon — “You have cast all my sins behind your back.”

5. Before, however, I divided my text, I ought to have given you another translation of it. Not that I would readily find fault with our version at any time, for it is, as a rule, marvellously correct and extremely forcible, and I am afraid when the new translation of the Bible comes out it will be better to light our fires with it than to give up the old version, which is so dear to us and so interwoven into all our religious life. I trust our grandfather’s Bible will maintain its hold on the mind of the English public against all comers, for it is so simple and yet so sublime, so plain and yet so heavenly in style. The translation which I shall now submit to you is, however, more exactly literal according to the Hebrew: “Behold, to peace my bitter bitterness”; or, “Marah, Marah,” “and you have loved my soul from the pit of destruction, because you have cast all my sins behind your back.”

6. I. Our first point is HEALTHFUL BITTERNESS, and you have it in the first sentence, which runs in Hebrew very nearly as follows — “Behold, to peace (or to health) my bitter bitterness.” Our translators have given us, as it were, an interpretation of it rather than a translation; I do not dispute their interpretation, but yet it does not embrace all the meaning which the words convey to the instructed reader. The Hebrew is abrupt, sententious, and full of teaching — “Behold, to peace my bitter bitterness.”

7. This means, first, that he underwent a great, sad, and unexpected change. His peace, according to our version, was taken away, and for it he had great bitterness. The city of Jerusalem had been surrounded by Rabshakeh’s armies; Sennacherib had sent his lieutenant to demand immediate surrender, and that commander had written a letter full of blasphemy and contempt. Hezekiah, having very little faith, was terribly depressed; but though he did not have sufficient grace to be at ease in his mind he had wisdom enough to go to his God in prayer. He spread the letter of Rabshakeh before the Lord, and in due season he obtained an answer which more than satisfied him. “The king of Assyria shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it.” The angel of the Lord struck the armed men of the king of Assyria in their thousands, and the tyrant hearing a rumour, fled to his own capital, where his sons struck him with the sword. There was an end of Sennacherib, and one would have said, and doubtless Hezekiah did say, “Now I shall have a long season of quiet; I shall reign in power over my country, watch over its interests, promote the happiness of my people, discharge justice, build up an empire, and then eventually when I grow grey in years in the fulness of time I shall be gathered to my fathers in peace, as a shock of grain comes in in its season.” Instead of this, while he was in the meridian of his age, and had as yet no heir to his crown, he finds himself struck with a painful, debilitating, and depressing disease, and he knows that he must die. Hear him as, to the music of sighs and groans, he sings a mournful ditty — “I shall go to the gates of the grave, I am deprived of the remainder of my years.” Ah, brethren, let us never boast ourselves about tomorrow, for we do not know what a day may bring forth. The promises of the opening morning are not often fulfilled, clouds gather and the sun which rose in splendour sets in showers. We think that now we have made our nest as downy as it can be, and we who ought to know better still say, “Soul, take your ease: my mountain stands firm, I shall never be moved.” But ah, how soon the mountain shakes, the nest is filled with thorns, and the joy vanishes. The great Master of the feast comes in, clears the tables, takes away the rich things full of marrow and the wines on the lees well refined, and instead of that tells his servants to bring out the wine of astonishment and the bread of sorrow. Ah, what changes may come! What changes have come to some present here. You have gained the object of your life, and then have been disappointed in it; you have after many a struggle reached the position you sought for so eagerly, and now you find it a hard, uncomfortable ledge of rock overhung with thorns and briars. You thought that when a certain trial was surmounted, which had so long been the “hill difficulty” of your way, you would come to a level plain where your willing feet should joyfully skip towards heaven; but now new mountains rise before you, unexpected Alps lift up their frowning battlements, and your spirit is filled with heaviness at the dreary prospect: for peace you have great bitterness. Now, if this is so with you, consider it no strange thing, and do not imagine that an uncommon experience has happened to you. It was so with Hezekiah, and has been so with tens of thousands of others whom the Lord has loved.

8. Notice, further, that Hezekiah’s condition was one of emphatic sorrow, for he says, “Behold to peace, Marah Marah, — bitter bitter,” or “bitter bitterness.” We read that when the children of Israel came to Marah they could not drink from the waters, for they were bitter. No one knows, unless they have experienced it, what parching thirst is, and how cruel is the disappointment when, seeing water before you, you discover it to be so brackish that you cannot drink it. It tantalizes a man when he is least able to exhibit patience, and so it intensifies the previous pain of the thirst. Marah was a notable place in the journeys of the children of Israel, and Hezekiah had come spiritually to a double Marah, a Marah Marah. Have you, dear friends, ever passed that way and drank double bitterness — the wormwood and the gall. Beloved, some of us know what it means, for we have had at the same time a body racked with pain, and a soul full of heaviness. “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but who can bear a wounded spirit?” Perhaps the double Marah has come in another form: it is a time of severe trouble, and just then the friend in whom you trusted has forsaken you; this is sorrow upon sorrow. Or perhaps you are in temporal difficulties, and at the same time in great spiritual straits: here also is Marah Marah. The flying fish is pursued by a fierce enemy in the sea, and when it flies into the air birds of prey are eager after it; in like manner both in temporal and spiritual things we are assailed. Paul notes in his famous voyage that he came to a place where two seas met: have you ever sailed through such a dangerous part of the sea? I do not doubt that you have, and have at the same time found both trouble and sorrow. Well, then, again I say to you, do not consider it strange concerning the fiery trial, as though some strange thing had happened to you; for the same affliction has happened to many of your brethren; yes, it has so often happened as to become a proverb that “bad things seldom come alone.” Lo, on the heels of the first of Job’s messengers there hastens another. If the Sabeans have taken away the oxen and the donkeys, we may be sure that the fire of God will be upon the sheep, and the Chaldeans are already after the camels: indeed, do not wonder if the wind from the wilderness has struck the four corners of the house and buried the children in the ruins, for adversities usually hunt in packs. Deep calls to deep. Like countless birds which fly over our heads, migrating to distant lands, so do trials pass over us in clouds, and we are startled as we hear strange and mysterious voices threatening grievous ills.

9. Now notice that the meaning of our verse is not at all exhausted by this explanation; we find in it a better meaning by far. “Behold to peace bitter bitterness,” that is to say, the king’s double bitterness accomplished his peace and health. Take the word in the sense of health first. The illustration of the text is well known. Many a time when a man has been exceedingly ill, the medicine which has cured him has been intensely disagreeable to the taste; it has been as gall to his palate, but it has operated as a strengthening tonic, it has chased out the fever, and purged away the cause of the malady, and the man has recovered. Hezekiah bore witness that God had sanctified his bodily sickness and his mental sorrow to his spiritual health. Is it not often so with us? “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept your word.” Hezekiah had time during his sickness to consider his disorderly house. While he lay with his face to the wall, he read a great deal upon that wall which he had seen nowhere else: a handwriting flamed forth in burning letters before his conscience, and this was its interpretation — “Set your house in order.” This writing would remain before his eyes even after he was healed. The death-warrant was cancelled, but the mandate was not retracted — “Set your house in order.” It needed setting in order, and his first business was to look into home affairs, uncover family abuses, and search into personal errors. In his quiet bedroom the king would look over the administration of his kingdom, and take note of the many mistakes he had made, the wrong acts which he had permitted in his subordinates, and all the abuses of the times. Among the rest, his own personal unbelief would rise before him, he would remember his fear and doubts, and mourn over them. He had evidently been far more daunted by Rabshakeh at the first than he ought to have been, for Isaiah to comfort him said, “Do not be afraid of the words which you have heard.” He would think over his whole life, and beginning with himself would search out all errors of the state and of the church. Self-examination is a great benefit for us, brethren, and anything which brings us to it does us real service. Brother, go over all of your spiritual farm, be diligent to know the state of your flocks, and look well to your herds. Break up the fallow ground and clear out the thorns. Take the little foxes which spoil the vines, and chase away the birds which devour the seed. Let all things be in the best condition — thus your sickness will work towards your health by discovering the secret source of your malady.

10. The king’s bitterness of soul then led him to repent of his wrong-doing, as he saw where he had sinned. He mourned his folly before God, and humbled himself because of the inward sinfulness of nature out of which the outward transgression had come. I am sure that very often sickness reveals a man to himself. We seldom see ourselves until sorrow holds up the mirror before our eyes. Self is an unpleasant subject for study, anatomy is nothing to it: to dissect a corpse is not half so disagreeable as to examine your own character. Have you ever laid yourself upon the table, cut deep with the dissecting knife, laid bare the inward parts, and opened up the hidden things of the heart? Have you taken yourself to pieces bone by bone? When you have reached your heart, have you not earnestly wished that you could avoid making any pre-mortem examination of that desperately diseased organ? Ah, me! what a humiliating piece of business is the anatomizing of the natural heart, that heart which is deceitful above all things, that heart out of which come envyings and murders. We flinch from this until sickness and despondency strap us down and work away with the surgical knife; and yet this is one of the most beneficial of operations, for “by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of our spirit.” Ah, this bitter bitterness, which makes us look within and see ourselves in our true colours, is of far more use to us than those dainty repasts which make us like the Israelites with the quails, full of meat, but also close to cursing.

11. I can well imagine that this bitter bitterness made Hezekiah see the need for his God more than he had ever seen it before. He knew in whose hand his breath was, and felt his entire dependence upon the divine will. He saw himself to be absolutely in God’s power, as much as the thread is under the hand of the weaver, who snaps it whenever he pleases, or as the prey is under the power of the lion who can break all its bones. Now he learned to cling to the Lord his God, and to cry, “Oh Lord, I am oppressed, undertake for me.” Now he knew that the Lord was ready to save him, and while his heart was filled with joy because of the promise of prolonged life, he was also full of shame that he had ever doubted the power and grace of God in the hour of trouble. He would henceforth feel that the Almighty Lord who could bring back the shadow upon the sundial ten degrees could as readily check the wrath and power of the most terrible invader: he who could deliver him from the gates of the grave, could assuredly save him from the rage of mortal man; and he who used a poor lump of figs to disappoint death of its prey, could also employ the weakest means to overthrow the most potent foe of Israel. Henceforth he would lean upon the Eternal, and tell the virgin daughter of Zion to despise her adversary and laugh him to scorn. After that schooling Hezekiah would exhibit greater spiritual strength, more confidence in the promise, more power with God, more zeal in the divine service, and his peace would come back to him and would be even deeper than at first. That joy which had fled because of sin and God’s visitation on account of it, returned to him once more; he felt himself to be happier because he was holier; he felt himself strengthened because the blessed purgative, though bitter, had removed a constant source of weakness; and he rose from his bed, not merely a new man in bodily health, but, a renewed man concerning his entire spiritual nature. How sweet are the uses of adversity when the Holy Spirit uses his sacred art upon the soul and turns the brine of tears into a sacred salt by which to season the spirit.

12. Before I leave this point I would express my prayerful desire that this may be the result of every drop of bitter which any of you may ever taste throughout your future lives. If you are not the Lord’s people, your bitterness has no blessing in it, on the contrary, you may look upon it as a foretaste of that endless Marah by whose brackish fountain the impenitent must sit and weep for ever; but if you are the Lord’s child, believing in Christ Jesus, all is well, “for we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose.”

13. II. Now we come to the second part of our text, which is particularly sweet to our souls, for it presents the LOVING DELIVERANCE. The original runs like this: “And you have loved my soul from the pit of destruction.” Taken in its first sense, the king ascribes to the love of God his deliverance from death and the grave; and praises God for his restoration to the land of the living. But the words of inspired men frequently have a deeper significance than appears upon the surface, and indeed they often conceal an inner sense which perhaps they themselves did not perceive, and hence the king’s words are as dark sayings upon a harp full of meaning within meaning. At any rate, taking the language out of the mouth of Hezekiah, we will use it for expressing our own emotions, and give to it a wider sense if such is not the original range of its meaning.

14. Let us notice three things, the deed of grace, “You have brought my soul from the pit of corruption”; secondly, the power by which it was performed “You have loved my soul out of the pit of corruption”; and thirdly, the modus operandi, which is indicated by another and equally good translation, “You have embraced my soul from the pit of corruption.”

15. First, then, the deed of grace of which you and I can sing. “The Lord delivered us from the pit of corruption.” First, from the pit of hell. Ah, I should have gone there long, long ago if mercy had not interposed. “A platitude,” one says. Ah, brother, may God save you from thinking the acknowledgment of God’s choicest mercies to be a platitude. I imagine that those in hell would think it no platitude for us to bless God that we are not in their torments. Our sins, like millstones around our neck, might have sunk us in the sea of divine wrath twenty years ago; and is it not a thing to be spoken of again and again, a mercy to bless God for, that we are not in the abode of condemned souls? Is it not even more a reason for gratitude that we never shall be there? Believing in Jesus Christ, and resting in the atoning blood, “there is therefore now no damnation,” as the older version used to run, “to those who are in Christ Jesus.” “Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, yes rather, who has risen again.” The dreadful gates of hell shall never be passed by a soul that believes in Christ Jesus; for us there is no undying worm, for us no unquenchable fire, for us no wrath to come. Glory be to God for this amazing grace.

16. But next, he has also delivered us from the pit of sinfulness, to my mind as horrible a pit as hell itself, indeed under some aspects it is the same thing, for sinfulness is hell, and to live under the power of sin is to be condemned. Well, brethren, years ago sinfulness was our master, and we loved it; we hated the ways of God and loved the wages of unrighteousness; but at this present moment, although we mourn because we are not perfectly rid of sin, yet sin shall not have dominion over us. We see sin in our nature, but we loathe it; it is no more a native citizen of our soul, but an alien to be expelled, an outlaw to be hunted down. No more do we consent to sin; “it is no more I who is doing it, but sin that resides in me.” Blessed be God, although we are sometimes brought into captivity to the body of this death, yet he gives us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord. We are driving out the Canaanites of sin, little by little by force of arms and by the might of grace, and soon every Jericho shall fall flat to the ground, and every Amorite be slain. Let us rejoice in being delivered from this pit of corruption.

17. Equally has the Lord delivered us at this time from the awful consciousness of wrath under which we once groaned. Brethren, you have not forgotten the time when you felt the hand of God heavy upon you under conviction of sin. I do not know what the pangs of damned souls may be, but I think I have been almost able to guess their horror, in my hours of deep distress, when my soul chose strangling rather than life because of my misery, for I was drunken with wormwood and filled with severe anguish. This I know, that if my horror could have been greater my life must have expired. It is not always that awakened souls suffer so much, but any man who has felt his own sinfulness has seen what might make every individual hair upon his head stand upright with horror, since to be a sinner is the most dreadful thing conceivable. To have God’s wrath revealed in the spirit is to have a seething hell within one’s conscience. But, blessed be his name, he has loved us out of that pit of despair. No longer are we burdened with a sense of sin, for we are pardoned; our conscience is purged from dead works; the precious blood has made us happy in God; we are reconciled to him by the death of his Son, and all our trespasses are forgiven for ever. Therefore our heart is glad in the Lord, and we will sing to him our songs upon our stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the Lord.

   In a dungeon deep he found me,
      Without water, without light,
   Bound in chains of horrid darkness,
      Gloomy, thick, Egyptian night;
         He recovered
      Thence my soul with price immense.
   And for this let men and angels,
      All the heavenly hosts above,
   Choirs of seraphims elected,
      With their golden harps of love,
         Praise and worship,
      My Redeemer without end.

18. Since that first dark hour of conviction I dare say you have passed through other fearful depressions of spirit, very similar to what is recorded about Hezekiah. You have not descended quite so deep into the pit as you did at first, but yet you have known bitter sorrows and have been delivered from them. Are you happy this morning in the Lord? Are you again rejoicing? Then say with the king, — “You have in love for my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption. The Lord was ready to save me: therefore we will sing my songs to the accompaniment of stringed instruments in the house of the Lord.”

19. There is quickly coming a time when we shall sing this song more sweetly in a better land than this, where there shall be none of these mists to hang around us, but changeless, everlasting noonday without a cloud. In heaven how sweetly shall we sing this song upon our stringed instruments, when there shall be no corruption left in us, but we shall be pure as the soul of God himself, perfect as Christ our Redeemer. What hymns of gratitude shall we chant before the throne, when standing on the heights of heaven we gaze into the depths of hell; when from our perfection we remember the fall and all its ruin from which almighty grace lifted us up! Glory be to the Lord for ever, for “In love for my soul you have delivered it from the pit of corruption.” Hallelujah! This is the deed which grace has done.

20. Now, we have to notice the power which performed it. To my mind the truth presented here is the delicious food for meditation, but it is not easily brought out in preaching. Hear the words — “You have loved my soul out of the pit of corruption.” Love performed the rescue. Love did it all; let love wear the crown. I was asleep in my sin, but you, oh love, aroused me with a kiss. Only when I began to hear that Jesus loved poor souls to the death, and therefore came to seek and save sinners, did I begin to awaken from my deadly lethargy. Do you, my brethren, remember when the first thought entered into your minds that after all there was hope, for God was full of love? Did not that thought stir you? Did not the Lord love you out of the sleep of sin? Moreover, you loved sin, and its wages, and the world looked very pleasantly upon you while it enthralled you: at last you came to know that the love of God was sweeter by far than the love of sin, you had a glimpse of Jesus’ dear marred visage, all bedewed with spittle and with blood, and he appeared so much more fair and lovely than your sin that you began to feel that sin and you must part. Thus the Lord loved you out of your love for sin. His sweet love made sin nauseous to you, you were weary of it, and would have no more of it. Do you remember that when you fell into despair and said, “I have been such a sinner that I must die in my sin,” you were lifted up from the pit of unbelief? I know that I was borne out of it upon the eagle wings of love. The Lord loved me out of it; he shed abroad such love in my soul that I could not be an unbeliever any longer. Just as an iceberg must surely melt when once it is borne along by the Gulf Stream, so my unbelief was compelled to dissolve in the warm stream of his dear love. Believe him? How could I doubt him when I saw his love for sinners, and heard of his death for the very chief of them, even for such as I was? He loved me out of my unbelief. But then I felt so weak I could do nothing; I was afraid to unite with his people, and afraid to make confession of my faith for fear I should dishonour him. Then he came and loved me out of my timorousness, shed his love abroad in my heart so powerfully that I became strong with the strength he gave me, and knew myself to be safe because I was in his keeping. Then I came forward and confessed his name and united with his saints, for I felt that I could trust my Lord to keep me even to the end, for his love had loved me out of my weakness. I am telling the story as though it were about myself, but, brother, I mean it about you as well, you have wandered sometimes since then, you have gone away from your Lord into worldliness and much that you sincerely deplore; and who is it that has led you back to peace and holiness? Who has been the Good Shepherd and restored your soul? My loving Lord has driven me back sometimes with sharp words of rebuke, but more often he has loved me back with attractive tenderness. What a wonderful magnet love is! It draws our iron hearts to itself. Its sway is kind but irresistible. We wander here and there, in the instability of our minds, until a memory of the days of love comes over our spirit, and immediately we can rest no longer in the things of earth after which we have so wickedly gone astray, but we say, “I will return to my first husband, for it was better with me at that time than now.” A moment’s memory of the days of our espousals makes the heart sick with longings to return to her home in the bosom of Jesus. He loves us out of our backslidings. Perhaps you have fallen into lukewarmness, and are chilly and lifeless, and what is the way to raise you up out of that horrible state? Is it not a way of love? When the Laodicean church was neither cold nor hot, and even her Beloved was ready to spue her out of his mouth, how was she told to rise out of her condition? Did not the Lord say, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock?” Christ’s coming to commune with the church was the cure for her indifference. When the love of God is shed abroad in the soul you no longer feel sleepy and indifferent, but your spirit girds herself with zeal as with a cloak, and your heart glows with vehement flames of affection. How truly does our poet sing —

   Oh Jesu, King most wonderful,
      Thou Conqueror renown’d,
   Thou sweetness most ineffable,
      In whom all joys are found!
   When once thou visitest the heart,
      Then truth begins to shine,
   Then earthly vanities depart,
      Then kindles love divine.

The ever gracious Lord intends to perfect what concerns you by the action of this very same love. His gentleness has made you great, and his love will make you glorious. Divine love is the most sanctifying agent in the world; it is what checked us before we knew the Lord when we ran so greedily after sin, and it is what constrains us now that we live for his name, for “the love of Christ constrains us.” Behold then the love of the Spirit! Is this not most blessed medicine? We spoke of bitter draughts under our first point, and truly these have their virtue, but here the Lord’s love uses medicine like itself; yes, it becomes itself the medicine, and the Lord seems to say, “Here is my dear sick child, and I will restore him by giving him more love.” Divine love is a catholicon, a universal medicine. No spiritual disease can resist its healing power. The love and blood of Jesus, applied by the Holy Spirit, will raise up the saints from pining sickness and restore them from the gates of the grave. No heart, however like granite it becomes, can long resist almighty love. The rebel may stand up in bold defiance, and stand out in daring obstinacy, but when he begins to feel God loves him he cries,

   Lord, thou hast won, at length I yield;
   My heart, by mighty grace compell’d
      Surrenders all to thee;
   Against thy terrors long I strove,
   But who can stand against thy love?
      Love conquers even me.
   If thou hadst bid thy thunders roll,
   And lightnings flash, to blast my soul,
      I still had stubborn been;
   But mercy has my heart subdued,
   A bleeding Saviour I have view’d,
      And now I hate my sin.

21. We must briefly notice the modus operandi of this love. “You have embraced my soul out of the pit of corruption.” Over there is the child in the pit, and the father wishing to save him, goes down into the pit and embraces his beloved one, and so brings him up to life and safety again. Jesus saved us in the same way. He embraced us by taking our nature, and so becoming one with us. It is by embraces that he regenerates converts and sanctifies us, for he comes into union with us by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. All our lives he communes with us and embraces us with arms of mighty love, and so lifts us up from the pit of corruption. In this way also he will bring us right up out of our fallen estate into perfection of holiness, by continuing the divine embrace, pressing us nearer, and nearer, and still nearer to his dear, loving heart, until all sin shall be pressed out of us. He will by one eternal embrace of unchanging love lift us out of the pit of corruption into a state of absolute perfection where we shall dwell with him for ever. Glory be to God for all this. He who has tasted this can only sing as Hezekiah did upon his stringed instruments all the days of his life in the house of the Lord.

22. III. We now have with much delight to consider the promise of ABSOLUTE PARDON. “For you have cast all my sins behind your back.”

23. King Hezekiah mentions this as the reason for his restored peace and health. He could not be healed and cheered until the reason for his disease was gone, and that was sin. Sin was the foreign element in his spiritual constitution, and as long as it was there it caused fret and worry and spiritual disease; but when the sin was gone then health and peace came back. Now let me take the words before us and present them in a few brief sentences, and ask you to notice, first, the burden — sin. A heavy load, a weighty curse. Observe the owner of this burden: Hezekiah says, not sin only, but my sin. If any sins in the world are heavier than others they are mine. Brother, you feel yours to be so, do you not? Then take the next word, which is a word of multitude and notice the comprehensiveness of that burden. All my sins. “You have cast all my sins.” Let us spell that word, ALL my sins. What a row of numbers it would take to sum them all; concerning the record of them, surely it would reach around the sky, — all my sins. In what balance shall they be weighed? What must the wrath be which is due to me on account of them? Think long and humbly on the words — all my sins.

24. Now, see the Lord comes to deal with them! He takes them all, and what does he do? He casts them. “You have cast all my sins.” What a deed of omnipotence! What a divine cast! No one except Jehovah Jesus himself could even have lifted all my sins, but he did lift them, and, like another Atlas, he bore them upon his shoulders; and having done that even until he sweat great drops of blood and bled even to death, he then took the whole mass of my sins and cast them as far as the east is from the west; indeed more, he cast them behind Jehovah’s back. Where is that? Behind God’s back; where can that be? Men throw things behind their back when they cannot bear the sight of them. Our sin is loathsome and abominable to God, he will not look upon it, and so he casts it behind his back. But then he is a just God, and he must punish iniquity; it must come before the eye of his holiness to be avenged. We have not, therefore, seen as yet the full meaning of the passage. No, it means that the Lord becomes oblivious of his people’s sins. Someone said the other day concerning a certain matter of business, “I shall never think of it again; it is gone as though it had never been.” The Lord intends all that concerning his people’s sins: “I shall never think of them again, they are quite gone as far as I am concerned, I have thrown them where I shall never see them any more, I will remember their sins and iniquities no more.” What a gracious mode of pardoning sin! God himself passes an act of oblivion and declares, “I will not remember their sins.” He looks upon his people who have been so provoking, and are still so prone to sin, and yet he sees no iniquity in Jacob, nor perverseness in Israel. He sees his people washed in the blood of the Lamb, robed in the righteousness which is in God by faith, and he sees in them neither spot nor wrinkle, nor any such thing, for he has cast their sins so far away that they are out of sight of omniscience and out of mind of omnipresence. Again, I would remind you of the words, “behind your back.” Where is that? All things are before God’s face: he looks on all the works of his hands, and he sees all things that exist. Behind his back! It must mean annihilation, non-existence, and non-entity. Oh my soul, your God has flung your sin into non-entity, and effectively made an end of it: he treats you as though it never had been, and as far as his justice is concerned through the vicarious sacrifice of Christ, it is to the Lord as though we had never transgressed at all. “You have cast all my sins behind your back.”

25. I do not think I need to preach any longer upon this subject. Go home and think it over in quiet meditation under the overshadowing of the divine Spirit. Dear child of God, endeavour to get a grip of this great privilege of perfect pardon, and never let it go. May the Holy Spirit seal it home to you. You are right in bringing your sins before your own face and mourning over them; that is the place where they should be, but do not at the same time forget that they are forgiven. When a man casts his sins behind his back God will put them before his face: but when in penitence a believer sets his sins before his own face to mourn over them then the Lord in mercy declares that he will cast them behind his back. Oh believer in Jesus, your sin is gone for ever. Be restful, happy, secure, for you are accepted in the Beloved. Your sin has ceased to be. The longest lines can never reach the bottom of that sea into whose depths Jehovah has cast them; the utmost industry of the devil can never travel into that land which does not exist, even the land which lies behind Jehovah’s back, where he has cast your sin. Who would not be a believer in Jesus? Even if he were severely sick, and had to lie like Hezekiah, on the bed of death, who would not be a believer? Even though he had to cry out Marah, Marah, bitterness twice over, who would not be a believer, and be embraced out of his misery by that mighty love which abolishes the sin of the penitent? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, oh sinner, and this shall be your portion also by God’s abundant mercy. Amen.

[Portion Of Scripture Read Before Sermon — Isa 38]
[See Spurgeon_Hymnal “Spirit of the Psalms — Psalm 103” 103]
[See Spurgeon_Hymnal “The Work of Grace as a Whole — Grace Immutable” 243]
[See Spurgeon_Hymnal “The Work of Grace as a Whole — ‘Grace Reigns’ ” 233]
 

Spirit of the Psalms
Psalm 103 (Version 1)
1 My soul, repeat his praise,
      Whose mercies are so great;
   Whose anger is so slow to rise,
      So ready to abate.
2 God will not always chide;
      And when his strokes are felt,
   His strokes are fewer than our crimes,
      And lighter than our guilt.
3 High as the heavens are raised
      Above the ground we tread,
   So far the riches of his grace
      Our highest thought exceed.
4 His power subdues our sins;
      And his forgiving love,
   Far as the east is from the west,
      Doth all our guilt remove.
5 The pity of the Lord,
      To those that fear his name,
   Far as the east is from the west,
      He knows our feeble frame.
6 He knows we but dust,
      Scatter’d with every breath;
   His anger, like a rising wind,
      Can send us swift to death.
7 Our days are as the grass,
      Or like the morning flower;
   If one sharp blast sweep o’er the field,
      It withers in an hour.
8 But thy compassions, Lord,
      To endless years endure;
   And children’s children ever find,
      Thy words of promise sure.
                        Isaac Watts, 1719.
 

Psalm 103 (Version 2)
1 Oh bless the Lord, my soul!
      Let all within me join,
   And aid my tongue to bless his name,
      Whose favours are divine.
2 Oh, bless the Lord, my soul,
      Nor let his mercies lie
   Forgotten in unthankfulness,
      And without praises die.
3 ‘Tis he forgives thy sins;
      ‘Tis he relieves thy pain;
   ‘Tis he that heals thy sicknesses,
      And makes thee young again.
4 He crowns thy life with love,
      When ransom’d from the grave;
   He that redeem’d my soul from hell
      Hath sovereign power to save.
5 He fills the poor with good,
      He gives the sufferers rest;
   The Lord hath judgments for the proud,
      And justice for the oppress’d
6 His wondrous works and ways
      He made by Moses known;
   But sent the world his truth and grace
      By his beloved Son.
                        Isaac Watts, 1719.
 

Psalm 103 (Version 3) <8.7.4. />
1 Praise, my soul, the King of heaven;
   To his feet thy tribute bring!
   Ransom’d, heal’d, restored, forgiven,
   Who like me his praise should sing!
      Praise him! praise him,
      Praise him! praise him,
   Praise the everlasting King!
2 Praise him for his grace and favour
   To our fathers in distress!
   Praise him still the same as ever,
   Slow to chide and swift to bless!
      Praise him! praise him,
      Praise him! praise him
   Glorious in his faithfulness!
3 Father-like he tends and spares us,
   Well our feeble frame he knows;
   In his hands he gently bears us,
   Rescues us from all our foes.
      Praise him! praise him,
      Praise him! praise him,
   Widely as his mercy flows.
4 Frail as summer’s flower we flourish;
   Blows the wind, and it is gone;
   But while mortals rise and perish,
   God endures unchanging on.
      Praise him! praise him,
      Praise him! praise him,
   Praise the High Eternal One.
5 Angels, help us to adore him;
   Ye behold him face to face;
   Sun and moon bow down before him,
   Dwellers all in time and space.
      Praise him! praise him,
      Praise him! praise him,
   Praise with us the God of grace!
                     Henry Francis Lyte, 1834.
 

The Work of Grace as a Whole
243 — Grace Immutable <148TH />
1 Oh my distrustful heart,
   How small thy faith appears!
   But greater, Lord, thou art
   Than all my doubts and fears:
   Did Jesus once upon me shine?
   Then Jesus is for ever mine.
2 Unchangeable his will,
   Whatever be my frame;
   His loving heart is still
   Eternally the same;
   My soul through many changes goes,
   His love no variation knows.
3 Thou, Lord, wilt carry on,
   And perfectly perform,
   The work thou hast begun
   In me a sinful worm:
   ‘Midst all my fears, and sin, and woe,
   Thy Spirit will not let me go.
4 The bowels of thy grace
   At first did freely move:
   I still shall see thy face,
   And feel that God is love:
   My soul into thine arms I cast,
   I know, I shall be saved at last.
                  William Hammond, 1745.
 

The Work of Grace as a Whole
233 — “Grace Reigns”
1 Grace! ‘tis a charming sound!
      Harmonious to the ear!
   Heaven with the echo shall resound,
      And all the earth shall hear.
2 Grace first contrived the way
      To save rebellious man;
   And all the steps that grace display
      Which drew the wondrous plan.
3 Grace first inscribed my name
      In God’s eternal book:
   ‘Twas grace that gave me to the Lamb,
      Who all my sorrows took.
4 Grace led my roving feet
      To tread the heavenly road;
   And new supplies each hour I meet
      While pressing on to God.
5 Grace taught my soul to pray,
      And made my eyes o’erflow;
   ‘Twas grace that kept me to this day,
      And will not let me go.
6 Grace all the work shall crown,
      Through everlasting days;
   It lays in heaven the topmost stone,
      And well deserves the praise.
                  Philip Doddridge, 1755;
                  Augustus M. Toplady, 1776.