I am weary with repenting.
The Almighty weary with repenting
I. God repenting. God condescends to designate His conduct by that name. The expression may be inadequate and defective, but still language had nothing better to describe the idea, nor human experience to represent the fact. When God is pleased to speak of Himself as pitying, repenting, grieving for man’s sake, what is evidently intended is, that so intense is His love for man, that were His infinite nature capable of these creature passions, His love would show itself in these very forms.
II. God provoked to a degree that He can repent no more. He is “weary with repenting”: worn and tired out with having to cancel threatened sentences so often--as a potentate of earth might be at finding that every fresh display of patience in his subjects masked but deeper hatred to his rule, and every amnesty he declared was but a signal for raising the standard of rebellion anew. What can man do, to move the Author of his being to regard him in this way? We must not speculate; we must let the great God speak for Himself; we must try to gather out of other Scriptures what those things are which are said to weary God, wear out His patience, make Him tired of His forgivenesses, reprieves, and revoked sentences.
1. Among these provocations we may note hypocrisy and allowed formality in religious duty (Isaiah 1:13-14).
2. We may make God weary by presumptuous and unwarranted calculations upon His mercy (Malachi 2:17).
3. Another thing Scripture teaches us wearies, puts God out of patience, is unbelief, a restoring to creature trust and dependencies, a want of simplicity and unreservedness in accepting His promises, as if we thought He would not pay them in full, or did not mean them to be taken by us, in all their length and breadth, and depth and worth.
4. The awful limit prescribed in the text may be reached, and the Divine forbearance tasked one step too far, by provocations after mercies. (D. Moore, M. A.)
Jehovah weary with repenting
The fact that God is “weary of repenting” shows--
1. That God had often turned from His threatenings, and dealt in mercy with the people.
2. That the Divine mercy had been frequently abused, and the people had gone back again to their sins.
3. That not a change in His being, but only a change of relationship, is expressed by the word “repent.”
4. That judgment is alien to God’s heart, whereas mercy is His delight.
5. That when God is met with persistent ingratitude, and men relapse continually into sin, He must eventually punish them.
6. That the operations of the Divine mind can only be expressed in human language with difficulty and limitation.
7. That we should be careful not to trifle with or abuse, the patient long-suffering of God. (W. Whale.)
Divine judgments and man’s relation to them
Famine, pestilence, revolution, war, are judgments of the Ruler of the world. What sort of a ruler, we ask, is He? The answer to that question will determine the true sense of the term--the judgment of God. The heathen saw Him as a passionate, capricious, changeable Being, who could be angered and appeased by men. The Jewish prophet saw Him as a God whose ways were equal, who was unchangeable, who was not to be bought off by sacrifices but pleased by righteous dealing, and who would remove the punishment when the causes which brought it on were taken away; in other words, when men repented God would repent. That does not mean that He changed His laws to relieve them of their suffering, but that they changed their relationships to His law, so that, to them thus changed, God seemed to change. A boat rows against the stream; the current punishes it. So is a nation violating the law of God, it is subject to punishment, judgment. The boat turns and goes with the stream; and the current assists it. So is a nation which has repented and put itself into harmony with God’s law; it is subject to a blessing. But the current is the same; it has not changed, only the boat has changed its relation to the current. Neither does God change--we change; and the same law which executed itself in punishment now expresses itself in reward. (W. Brooke.)