Though I have bound and strengthened their arms, yet do they imagine mischief against me.' This text has received different translations. And I have instructed them and strengthened their arms, and yet they think evil against me" (Delitzsch). "Whether I chastised or strengthened their arms, yet they thought evil against me" (Elzas). I accept the latter translation; then the idea is, that God's treatment of man, whatever its character, afflictive or otherwise, is abused. Observe -

I. THAT GOD'S DISPENSATIONS WITH MEN ARE CHARACTERIZED BY VARIETY. "I have bound and strengthened," or, "I have chastised and strengthened." The events of human life are of a mixed and conflicting character. There is affliction and health, prosperity and adversity, friendship and bereavement, sorrow and joy, wounding and healing. All these conflicting events are under the direction of the great Father, whose aim in all is to make his children "meet for the inheritance of the saints in light." As the soil to be fruitful requires the frosts of winter as well as the sunbeams of spring and summer, man requires trials as well as joys to make his spirit fruitful in good works. As the loving father has the good of his child at heart whether he chastens him with a rod or presses him to his bosom, so has the Almighty Father in all his dispensations with men, whether the painful or the pleasant. "All these things worketh God oftentimes in man, that he may bring him back from the pit and enlighten him with the light of the living."

II. THAT WHATEVER THE CHARACTER OF THE DIVINE DISPENSATIONS, THEY ARE OFTEN PERVERTED. "They imagine mischief against me." It matters not what the treatment, they continue to rebel. They are like the sterile ground to which all seasons, all weathers, are alike. Observe:

1. The force of the human will. It can oppose the influences of God, and turn what he designs for good to in. Man is no passive being. He is not to be acted upon as a machine, not to be coerced either by anathemas or benedictions. He is a voluntary agent. This links him to moral government, makes him responsible for his actions, and invests his existence with a momentous solemnity.

2. The depravity of the human heart. This force of will explains, not man's rebellion, for regenerate souls and holy angels have it, and they run in the way of the Divine commandments. The reason of the rebellion is the depravity of the human heart, which is desperately wicked.

CONCLUSION. Open your hearts to the various dispensations of Heaven. Be thankful for their variety. One is designed to touch a chord within thee that another cannot reach. The one may strike conviction of sin, another may tune thy heart to gratitude and hope.

"God, full as kind as he is wise,
So tempereth all the favors he will do us,
That we his bounties may the better prize,
And make his chastisement less bitter to us.
One while a scorching indignation burns
The flowers and blossoms of our hope away,
Which into scarcity our plenty turns,
And changeth new-mown grass to parched hay;
Anon his fruitful showers and pleasing dews,
Commixed with cheerful rays, he sendeth down,
And then the barren earth her crops renews,
Which with rich harvests hills and valleys crown.
For, as to relish joys he sorrow sends,
So comfort or temptation still attends."

(George Wither.) D.T.

Sin, in its worst, forms, was rampant in the land, and the very rulers rejoiced in the wickedness of their people. The cause of all this social and national decay was in their original departure from the fear of the Lord. That was the root of the tree which bore such poisonous fruit. A melancholy description of character is given in this chapter. Warned by God's servants of the dangers that were before them, the people were for a time startled into a kind of thoughtfulness and reformation. But they soon became worse than before. The nation was, by turns, very religious and repenting, and very wicked and iniquitous. In the text we are shown what in them was defective, and led to the disastrous consequences of their ultimate captivity. It was their partial, unspiritual repentance. They returned, but not to God. They returned, and so imagined all was well with them, but not to God, and so, at length, destruction overtook them. Their repentance was a godless thing. So often, when men are aroused from their carelessness, they go a little way, but not the whole way; they retrace their steps, but they do not return to God.

I. THINGS WHICH INDICATE THE PRESENCE OF IMPERFECT REPENTANCE.

1. The grounds on which sorrow is felt by such a penitent for sin. There is nothing of God in the sorrow. The regret has the character of remorse and not that of repentance. It is grief for the consequences and punishment of sin, and not for the guilt of it in the sight of God. Of such worldly sorrow there are not a few painful instances in the Word of God. Saul, Pharaoh, Ahab, etc.

2. The character of the reformation which such a penitent makes. He returns to what he was before he fell into heinous sin; or, at least, to the worldly standard of respectable morality, but not to God. It is all external, not internal. It makes the man for the time a Pharisee, but not a Christian. This is very common in our times. A man has been addicted to some vice; he is prone to consider that repentance for him just means abstinence from that sin; and so he rests in that as if it were all that is required. He mistakes the laying aside of his besetting sin for the laying aside of every weight. Another form of this partial reformation is to be found in the external formalism of those who imagine that to repent means simply to attend church, take the communion, etc. When a man rests in that, as if it were reformation, he is not returning unto God.

3. The nature of the motive from which this reformation is set about. It is not for God's sake, but their own sake, and that very much as restricted to this life that they seek to return. It is of the nature of a bargain, in which the sinner covenants to give so much, if God will give so much, and not at all of the nature of a return for many favours received at the hands of God. It is repentance for the sake of his own interest, not for God's glory, and the work of Christ has had no share in it; it is done without God's Spirit.

II. DANGEROUS CONSEQUENCES THAT RESULT FROM THIS PARTIAL REPENTANCE.

1. It leads to self-deception. The man thinks that all is right with him because he has come so far, while, in point of fact, everything is wrong. He becomes thus in a manner proof against all expostulation, and dexterously turns away from him every appeal that can be made. There is no form of self-deception more common and more dangerous.

2. It leads to self-conceit. The man has done it all himself, and is very well satisfied with the doing. He carries his head higher than his fellows. He is even led to cavil at and decry many of the most important principles of the Gospel. It exalts man into his own saviour, and that is tantamount to saying it leaves a man unsaved.

3. It leads to repeated fallings away. This is a corollary from the last. "A proud look goeth before a fall." Christians who have true repentance do sometimes fall. But it is when they too have become heady and high-minded. The falls are not legitimate consequences of their repentance. But in the case of partial penitents nothing else could be expected.

4. It leads to the hardened heart. Nothing so tends to indurate the soul as the frequent repetition of such imperfect turnings.

5. It leads to swift and sudden destruction.

III. INDICATE WHAT TRITE REPENTANCE IS. There is —

1. A proper sense of sin. It is a departure from God.

2. A proper idea of God. That reacts upon the sense of sin, making it more intense and powerful. God now is viewed as the God of love. At the foot of the Cross the revelation comes of what sin is, and of what God is.

3. A genuine reformation. It is a return of the whole man to God. The word implies a new heart as well as a new life, or rather, a new heart in order to a new life.

(W. M. Taylor, D. D.)