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At first, men have very low ideas of sin. But when the Holy Spirit begins to deal with them, sin grows to be an intolerable burden, a fearsome thing. While the thought of sin becomes clear, the thought of pardon is not, at first, so clear. Sin is great, and for that reason the sinner thinks it cannot be pardoned, as if he measured the Lord by his sin. In our text God in condescension helps the sinner to believe in pardon by elevating his idea of God. Because God is infinitely superior to man, He can abundantly pardon.

I. YOUR OWN THOUGHTS JUDGE PARDON TO BE IMPOSSIBLE.

1. To some it seems impossible that there can be forgiveness for them, because of some special, secret, gross, and grievous sin. Most persons, when they remember their past lives, seen certain spot blacker than the rest.

2. To others the difficulty of pardon seems to lie not so much in some special offence, as in the number of their sins, and the long continuance of them.

3. Others have been grievously oppressed with the idea that they could not be pardoned because of the wilfulness of what they have done. Certainly, this is a very grievous evil. Wilfulness is the very damnableness of sin.

4. "Sir, says one, "I sinned with a great falseness and treachery of heart; for I was baptized and joined a Church."

5. I hear one say, "There is" about my, sin this peculiar heinousness, that,, I have injured myself and others by my sin."

6. Perhaps one may even say, But, sir, my sin was of this kind, that I dishonoured God: I denied the Deity of Christ."

II. GOD'S THOUGHTS OF OTHER THINGS ARE FAR ABOVE YOURS. It is quite certain that the best thoughts — the most logical thoughts, the most original thoughts, the most correct thoughts you have ever had — are not worthy to be compared with God's thoughts. Look in nature. The things you see in nature were, at first, thoughts in God's mind, and He embodied them. Did you ever think such thoughts as God has thought in creation? God's thoughts in providence — how wonderfully they are above ours I You read history, and everything seems to be a tangle. Yet, before you have read through the chapter, you see in it all a plan and a method. It has ever been so in your own mind as to the future. Read the prophecies, and see what is yet to be.

III. HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT PARDON ARE ABOVE YOURS.

1. Are you not slow to forgive? "He delighteth in mercy."

2. You come to an end of your forgiveness before long. But God goes on to seventy times seventy times — on, and on, and on, and never comes to the end of pardoning mercy so long as a soul cries to Him for forgiveness.

3. Some things you find it hard to forgive. God does far more in the way of pardon than we ask or even think.

4. I am afraid I must say of some of you that you forgive, but you do not forget. God promises to forget our iniquities. "I will cast all their sins behind My back." "I will cast their iniquities into the depths of the sea. They shall not be remembered against them any more for ever."

5. We forgive, and yet feel some returns of anger. "I have blotted out," says He, "thy transgressions." Once blotted out, they arc done with for ever.

6. I do not slander you when I say that you are not very eager to pardon, and proposes to make peace with him.

7. Do you think that any of us would suffer much for the sake of being able to forgive another? Should there be a very serious difficulty in the way, so that you cannot rightly forgive without some atonement being made, would you make the atonement yourself?

IV. GODS THOUGHTS ARE ABOVE YOURS IN ALL THINGS WHICH CONCERN HIS GRACE. See the first verse as to the freeness of His grace. Your thought is that you can get nothing without paying for: God's thoughts are, "Come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. But you think that if God were to save you He would perform it in a second-rate style. Not He! He will have no niggard salvations. If He supplies His people, it shall be most richly and freely. Listen to this. "Hearken diligently unto Me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. It is not amp of the water, or a ernst of the bread, or a drop of the milk; but when Christ invites poor sinners to come, He invites them to a high festival. You that are the guiltiest may come to Christ, and be among the happiest and the best of His saints. Nobody would ever imagine that a sinner could ever enter into covenant with God — that God should strike hands with guilty men, and, pledge Himself to grace. Listen to this: "Incline your ear, and come unto Me, etc. (ver. 3). I remember a man, shut up in prison, under a long sentence, and he was so violent that he was put into a solitary cell. The chaplain had done all he could as to bringing him to repentance; but one day he read to him this verse, "I will make an everlasting covenant with you." The man said, "I never heard of such a thing. Can God make a covenant with such a wretch as I am? Sir," said he, "it will break my heart;" and it did break his heart and he became a new man in Christ Jesus under the power of that amazing thought, that God would enter into covenant with such a wretch as he was. In ver. 5 Christ is said to call a people so ignorant that they did not know Him. This is to be His glory, that He is to call them by His grace. It is not one of your thoughts, but one of the thoughts of God, that He will glorify Christ in the saving of great sinners. "Ah, well!" says one, "I will go home, and cry to God for mercy. That is your thought. Listen to God's thought. Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near." Ah! still you think, "How can I be pardoned?" Listen to this, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts," etc. Read the rest of the chapter, and say to yourself, over each verse, "This was not my thought; this, was not my way." End all your doubts with the last verse," instead of the thorn, etc.

( C. H. Spurgeon.)

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KJV: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

WEB: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," says Yahweh.