The loving-kindness of God shown in his judgments.
"I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and flat thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me," says the psalmist (Psalms 119:75). No doubt, at last God must simply punish the obdurate and impenitent; but for the most part he sends his judgment upon men in mercy, either to turn them from their sins, or to refine and improve their characters.
I. EVEN WHEN GOD SIMPLY PUNISHES, IT IS IN LOVING-KINDNESS TO MANKIND AT LARGE. When a nation, like Israel, as distinct from Judah, has persisted in evil-doing for centuries, in spite of warnings, teaching, remonstrance, knowledge of the truth, its case is hopeless—"there is no remedy" (2 Chronicles 36:16). The blow that then falls upon the nation is penal and final—the requital of its ill desert. But if the blow is dealt to the nation itself in mere justice, it is also struck for the benefit of all neighboring nations, in mercy. It warns them from their evil ways; it says to them, in a voice which they can scarcely fail to hear, "Take heed, lest ye too perish."
II. MOST OF GOD'S JUDGMENTS ARE CHASTISEMENTS, SENT TO TURN MEN FROM THEIR SINS. "We have had fathers of our flesh who corrected us" (Hebrews 12:9) when we had done wrong, and strove thereby to deter us from evil. So God acts with his children. So he chastened Judah, bringing calamity after calamity upon her, until at last there was a "remnant" which truly turned to him, and became the germ of the Christian Church. So be has chastened many a nation besides. So, too, he chastens individuals, sending on them sickness, and poverty, and loss of friends, and other misfortunes, to check them in a career of sin, and cause them to pause, and reflect, and tremble at his mighty hand, and humble themselves under it, and change their course of life. In this way he chastened David by the loss of Bathsheba's first child, and by the revolt of Absalom and Adonijah; Hezekiah by war and sickness; Solomon by "adversaries" at home and abroad. Of this kind again are the natural punishments which he has attached to sins, the natural tendency of which is to deter men from them.
III. ONE CLASS OF HIS JUDGMENTS ARE TRIALS, SENT TO PROVE MEN, AND THEREBY TO PURIFY THEM AND RAISE THEM TO GREATER SAINTLINESS. "Every branch in me that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit" (John 15:2); "The trying of your faith worketh patience" (James 1:3). Christ himself, we are told, was in his human nature "made perfect through suffering." The discipline of affliction is needed for forming in us many of the highest Christian graces, as patience, resignation, forgivingness, mildness, long-suffering. The sons of God are taught to expect a chastening which shall be "for their profit, that they may be partakers of his holiness" (Hebrews 12:10).