Will God take me back?

Is it not so with us all, when in our natural state the light of God penetrates into conscience and heart? And what a faithful picture of this, and of the grace of God that gives a glorious welcome to all that turn to Him, even when still bearing all the tokens of the degradation into which their rebellion against Himself had brought them! Brought to the realization of the wretched state in which all by nature are, his first thought is to return to the God he has sinned against. Valueless are all his boon companions to him now. No one can help him but the God he has slighted and despised. He says, “I will arise and go to my father.” Blessed resolution! He comes, and is received into the arms of eternal love.

Now observe how beautifully He labours with these backsliding ten tribes to bring them back. "And the Lord said to me, The backsliding Israel has justified herself more than treacherous Judah. Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, says the Lord, and I will not. cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, says the Lord, and I will not keep anger for ever. Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree, and ye have not obeyed my voice, says the Lord. Turn, O backsliding children, says the Lord, for I am married to you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion: and I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding" (Jer. 3:11-15). Backslider! He then called them, and bid them come back. Now He calls you back. You might ask, How can I get back? You say, I feel God has spoken to my soul through His Word, I am drinking at broken cisterns, how am I to get back? Listen. "Only acknowledge thine iniquity" (Jer. 3:13). There is only one way back, and what is it? Confession. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). How touchingly tender is the call. "Turn, O backsliding children, says the Lord, for I am married to you" (Jer. 3:14). There was no break of relationship on God's part. See, too, how He encourages the heart in Jer. 3:15. It is really lovely, beloved, the way in which the Lord seeks to recover and link the soul with Himself.

From the sixteenth verse to the twentieth, we are shown how God will, by-and-by, recover and restore Israel. Jer. 3:21 shows the moral state that precedes restoration, i.e., weeping and prayer. Then comes another loving call. "Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings." Who could withstand such an appeal? Many a time a poor soul says, How can I get back, what must I go through to get back? Look at this verse, "Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings," and note the result of the call, "Behold, we come to thee; for thou art the Lord our God" (Jer. 3:22). Behold, we come. It is done. The soul that heeds the call to return says, "We come to thee; thou art the Lord our God."

I will now ask you to read the closing chapter of Hosea, because I think God gives us there, in other words, the way the soul gets back to the Lord. "O Israel, return to the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity" (Hosea 14:1). There is God's call again," Take with you words, and turn to the Lord: say to him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips" (Hosea 14:2). That is the returning soul's response and language, coupled with the sense of His grace. "Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods: for in thee the fatherless finds mercy" (Hosea 14:3). The two things that always lead the soul back to God are the sense of His grace and His mercy. And now, what is God's answer? "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him" (Hosea 14:4). What could be more blessed than this? What could more encourage a returning back slider? It Is love's victory over the lack of it.

So with an erring child of God. He is a deserter from the ranks, and he cannot enlist as a recruit. As a wanderer he must return, not to seek acquittal by a judge, but pardon from a Father. Let such remember that God's restoring grace is as great as His saving grace. If the guilty sinner is welcomed, so the wandering child will be, but it is as a child he must return, needing not conversion, but restoration, and he will assuredly obtain it through the advocacy of Christ.

On confessing, we are cleansed perfectly, forgiven in righteousness, on the ground of the sacrifice once offered; so that we are told, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:8-10.) It is not the believer taking the place of a miserable sinner; but a believer taking the place before God of an offending naughty child, counting on the faithfulness and justice of God to forgive his sins because of the sacrifice of Christ, and to cleanse him, and thus to restore him to happy communion. This is the divine way of restoring an erring child of God. He may be the weakest and most faulty of God's children; still he is a child to whom the Lord does not impute sin, and never can be, strictly speaking, a miserable sinner, even when feeling the dreadful character of his sin, before God in confession.

And the way the father receives the returning son shows us the way in which God receives us. He had just a little sense of grace, and therefore thinks he can no more be received as a son. He is content to come in as a hired servant. But when he was yet a great way off his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell upon his neck, and covered him with kisses. But the son said, “I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” But the father will please himself, and so will our God please Himself, with regard to His ways with us. He has no intention of bringing His son into the house in his nakedness to have him ashamed of himself. He says, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him. The best robe is Christ. In heaven there is none to equal it. Put a ring on his hand. He is brought into new and eternal relationships with God. There never can be a break in these relationships. Put shoes on his feet. He is a son, not a servant. He is at home, and in perfect liberty. It is not said to him: “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” (Ex. 3:5). He goes in with his shoes on.

In such circumstances one's heart turns in all its helplessness to the One against whom all our sins have been committed. In Him is mercy, compassion, and love. And there is more. In Him is the matchless wisdom that has found a way whereby He can fully and frankly forgive the sinner, and yet retain the righteous consistency of His throne. That way is Christ, "whom God has set forth to be a propitiation (or mercy seat) through faith in His blood" (Rom. 3:25). If this is the character of Him with whom we have to do, let us away with both the pride that refuses to acknowledge its guilt, and the despair that feels its sins are too grievous to be forgiven. For some are afflicted with the one disease, and some with the other. Nearly nineteen hundred years ago Paul made proclamation in the Pisidian Antioch — "Be it known to you that through this Man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins" (Acts 13:38); and the proclamation has not yet been withdrawn by the God who authorised it. Such a welcome as the scapegrace of Luke 15 received on his return to his father is awaiting all who will return in true contrition to our God. The kiss of forgiveness and the ring of endless love are favours He delights to bestow.

Oh! ye wanderers, ye fallen ones, ye sorrowing, desolate backsliders, the innermost place of His holy presence is opened to you by the presence of Him who bare your sins. Pure grace has thrown open the doors, and a Father's loving welcome awaits you. There all is light. I think I hear one say, Impossible! I have sinned too deeply. How can I be happy in such holiness and light? For it often happens that a backsliding child of God would own the fullness of grace to an unconverted sinner, and yet, as a child, or, rather, forgetting he is a child of grace, tries hard to find something to bring to God for restoration. But what was the next step in Judah's restoration? "Then Hezekiah the king rose early, and gathered the rulers of the city, and went up to the house of the Lord. And they brought seven bullocks, and seven rams, and seven lambs, and seven he-goats, for a sin-offering for the kingdom, and for the sanctuary, and for Judah: and he commanded the priests, the sons of Aaron, to offer them on the altar of the Lord." It was not three, five or six, but the Hebrew number of perfection, seven, of each kind, that were killed, and their blood sprinkled upon the altar. How much depends on our receiving the testimony of God, to the perfect value of the one offering prefigured by these sacrifices. This is the only ground of restoration and worship. The moment I believe it my soul is restored. The testimony of God was very clearly expressed in these shadows. "The king and the congregation laid their hands upon them." The goats for the sin-offering showing identification, as God had directed in the law. And his words were most plain. "And it shall be forgiven them." (Lev. 4:20, 26, 31, 35.) They knew it was so; for why should they doubt the word of God? And when the wanderer is thus brought back to God his Father, the word of God to him is quite as plain. "And the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin." (1 John 1:7.) Why, then, should he doubt it? "From all sin." These are wondrous words of comfort.

And though his sin could not be pardoned in one sense, and for his sin Jerusalem was destroyed (Jer. 15:4), yet personally, even such a sinner as Manasseh may receive a free and full pardon from the God of Israel. And that prayer for pardon, in the prison in Babylon, God valued so highly, that He caused it to be recorded, for the encouragement of other penitent sinners who would come back again, to the same God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil. (Joel 2:13). And, my dear, dear ones: should it be that one of you should ever wander from the narrow path: remember, the way back is wide, wide open; with the Father's kiss of pardon waiting for you; and not one single word of reproach, we know well what we deserve, and we cannot understand why we do not get it; indeed it is hard to believe that God is such a God, and yet it is true. Manasseh found him true to His word: aye, he found Him more than that, as we always find; and God gave to that wicked king who humbled himself, a little grandson Josiah, who proved to be one of the very best of Judah's long line of kings. Such is the grace of God.

Oh! sinner, sinner, — hear, believe! Thy days are few — thy last opportunity will soon come — delay not! Turn now, even now, to thy God and Saviour! Where sin abounds, grace much more abounds. In this, the day of God's wondrous grace, thy sins, however many, are all forgiven the moment thou hast faith in Jesus. Many prodigals, when feeling the bitterness of sin, after the pleasure is gone, would gladly return to their fathers' house on earth, but they are afraid of what would be said of them, and of the shame that would hang over them, and they cannot return. The assurance of a happy welcome and the past forgotten, would make them fly as on eagles' wings. But, oh! the thought of that disdainful look — that outside place, where the first was once enjoyed, wrings the heart, and seals its alienation. I would rather, it exclaims, die in my wretchedness, than submit to such humiliation! But now, my fellow sinner, listen — do listen to the pleadings of one who knows the bitterness of sin, and the sweetness of pardoning mercy. Things are not so with thy heavenly Father, nor with thy Father's house on high. Not only wouldst thou be welcomed, but thy Father in heaven would run to meet thee, and not one word would be said as to the past. The past, with every believer, is not only forgiven but forgotten. What a mercy! What a comfort to know it! The joy that fills the Father's heart on the return of the prodigal, fills all other hearts around Him. No disdainful looks would ever meet thee there — no outside place would ever be thine. Near and loved as Christ Himself — shining in His glory and beauty, and welcomed as a son of the Father, with all the dignities and honours which that love can bestow. But time, would fail, and paper and ink would be exhausted before they could write the glories of a child of God — of a sinner saved by sovereign grace.