Return again to Me, saith the Lord.
The backslider invited to return
We have here a wonderful display of God’s character: forbearance, pity, and love.
I. What is inferred. A departure from God.
1. The life of an ungodly man is one long departure from God. Every step he takes leads him farther away.
2. What departures we find even in the holiest and best! Secret neglects. Seductions in daily avocations and companions. Tampering with sin.
II. What is declared. A returning to God as a promising God, as a forgiving God, as our God and Father in Christ Jesus, in real humiliation of spirit before Him; for “whoso confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall have mercy.” Observe, the return is not a mere turning away from sin; it is finding the way back again to God. The very fruit and work of the blessed Spirit.
III. What is displayed. Touching tenderness.
1. God Himself speaks.
2. He points to the Cross. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)
Return to God
1. Let Christian believers behold in these words with whom it is that they have to do. There have been times when the Lord made you rejoice before Him--when your fellowship with Him was delight. And so He would have had you to continue. But your joy changed into sorrow, your light was quenched in darkness; not because you were forsaken, but because you forsook. You did evil in the sight of the Lord, and He delivered you into the hands of the Philistines. But He did not forsake you utterly, nor cast you off forever. He brought you back, and restored to you “the joy of His salvation.” Soon you forgot it all. You did evil again in His sight. He departed from you, and you were carried captive by your enemies. In the land of Babylon you wept, and hung your tuneless harps upon the willows, for you could not sing the Lord’s song in a strange land! You remembered Zion, and eagerly longed that your captivity might come to an end. And the Lord ended your captivity and brought you back. Yet, notwithstanding all your sad experiences, you have again and again forgotten and forsaken Him. What should be your feelings when you think of these things? Should there be any sorrow like unto your sorrow? Yet be not afraid; conclude not that your sins must of necessity have separated forever between you and God; say not that for you there is no hope in Israel, and no place left for repentance. Had you to do with man it might be so. Were you to be dealt with as you have sinned, It could not but be so. But the Lord God is merciful and gracious, His love continues as strong as ever. He cannot bear to give you up. He compassionates your weakness. He laments your folly.
2. Let those who are still in the gall of bitterness--alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, be assured that this language is addressed even to them. You are His, although you are now strangers and foreigners; for His hand did form you, and you were not designed to be His enemies. You have chosen to be so; but all the enmity is on your side. Your enemy He has never been; nor is He now your enemy! He is emphatically the friend of sinners. (R. J. Johnstone, M. A.)
Backsliding process
A church is sometimes astounded by the fall of some professor in it: this is the fruit, not the seed or the beginning of backsliding. So a man is laid on a sick bed, but the disorder has only now arrived at its crisis; it has for some time been working in his system, and has at length burst out and laid him low. So the sin of departing from God and secretly declining has been going on while the profession has still been maintained; the process of backsliding has been working silently yet surely until a temptation has at last opened the way for its bursting forth, to the scandal of God’s people and true religion. In the sight of God the man was fallen before, we only now have first discovered it. (H. G. Salter.)
Therefore the showers have been withholden.
God inflicting punishment on those who turn away from Him
If God is immanent in the universe, not a Deity immeasurable distances away from His creation; if without Him it could not hold together for a moment, there is nothing unreasonable in the thought that He should sometimes show resentment at the spirit of evil, indicate some emotion at least in the presence of ingratitude. We do the sage ourselves. Parents sometimes give children to feel that the penalty of ill-behaviour is the withdrawment of a privilege, the abbreviation of a holiday, the suspension of a pleasure. Sometimes by deprivation God inflicts punishment upon those who turn away from Him. In this case the penalty was one of deprivation--the showers had been withholden. Sometimes the penalty is positive, and there are too many showers. God drowns the world that denies Him. He does not withhold the showers for want of water; the debt, go is always ready: the river of God is full of water. It may be unscientific and ignorant to think that God interferes with nature, but it stands to our highest reason as a probable truth. If He made it, He may interfere with it; if He constructed it, He may sometimes wind it up, visit it, operate upon it, assert His eternal proprietorship. If the great landlord allows us to walk through his fields freely and joyously, he may sometimes, say, once in twenty-one years, put up a fence or a boundary, which being interpreted means, This path is mine, not yours; the boundary will be taken down again tomorrow, but it is here today to signify that you have acquired no rights by constant use. It is not an unnatural intervention, nor do we see that it is an unreasonable intervention on the part of God if we deny Him, neglect Him, scorn Him, operate wholly against the spirit of His holiness, that He should now and again withhold the shower, or send such deluges upon the earth as shall wash away our seed and make a desert of our garden. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The chief cause of calamities
Great honour has always been paid by all nations to their supposed gods, and it has always been reckoned a crime to rob them of the glory of which they were supposed to be so jealous. One of the Greek comedians in a stage play asks this question, “Who was the wicked author of the vines being blasted by the frost?” And he gives the answer, “He who gave the honours of the gods to men.” This heathen writer teaches us a lesson when we fail to trace our trials to the first cause. Who shall say that some dishonour of the name of God may not be the cause of our afflictions? Sorrow does not come out of the dust. The seeds of disease are not driven about recklessly. The lightning does not strike by chance. There are reasons for what seems evil which we cannot trace, and perhaps one of the chief causes of the calamities which befall men may be found in their want of regard for the honour and glory of the Divine Name. (Quiver.)