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I. LET US ADVERT TO THE CONTROVERSY ITSELF — WHAT IT IS, WHY IT IS, AND HOW IT IS CARRIED ON. What this quarrel is we know. It is a part of that ancient strife for mastery, which has been going on ever since the fall, between truth and error, light and darkness, holiness and sin. "The carnal mind is enmity against God. ' Unconverted men may demur to these representations; they tell us that they merely withhold from the Divine Being the homage which He expects and claims; but repugnance, hatred, enmity towards Him, they have none. But do they not hate the law of God? Would they not, if it were in their power, have Him alter the scheme of His entire moral government, His permissions, His requirements? This, speaking after the manner of men, makes God angry — sometimes the contendings of God with man take a judicial form. They are to condemn the sinner out of his own mouth, in that he did not see, in the bitter experiences of a life of evil, how the goodness of God was leading him to repentance. See a form of this contending with us, in that fixed and universal law of our being, which always makes us unhappy, when we are striving with God, when we reject His counsels, or resist His will, or try to get from under His yoke, or wrestle with all the obstructions of His providence, in order to have our own way. But, further, and more directly, God contends with us by His Word, and Spirit, and outward providences — by powerful awakenings at the heart when we look not for them, or by interposed checks and barriers when we are bent on the way of sin. There are restraints upon us often from without. And there are restraints upon us from within from the suggestions, and the admonitions, and remonstrances of the Divine Spirit in our hearts. But a more comforting view of our text, and one more in harmony with its general spirit, is that which supposes God to be contending with us, avowedly for the purposes of His own Fatherly correction, and only for the fulfilment of those ends; waiting to remove from us His heavy hand. These contendings of God with His own children take many forms. Chastening is a universal discipline. Very hard to bear is this contending of God with us; there is only one thing harder, and that is, the state in which He should not contend with us at all, but should leave us to ourselves.

II. THE LIMITS WHICH GOD HAS HIMSELF ASSIGNED TO THIS CONTROVERSY WITH THE SOULS OF MEN, AND THE REASONS MOVING HIM THERETO, Contend with us He must, and be wroth with us He must. It is a necessity forced upon Him by the circumstances of our fallen nature; but He will not contend for ever. Wisdom and goodness have decreed the bounds of this flooding wave and it shall go no farther. Now, in the case of the obstinately wicked and impenitent, we have seen why God will not contend for ever. They have their day of visitation and they outlive it; their accepted time and they sin on. The Judge wastes not scourges up, on them; they will make scourges enough for themselves. Hell itself is but Heaven's assisting grace withdrawn, and man left to the evil of his own heart. But in His own children, the limits of God's chastening are merciful limits. "He for our profit' — here is the universal law of the scourge; it will cease whenever our souls' profit ceases. "I will not contend for ever;" nor longer than may be necessary to try our faith, to prove our repentance, to see what there is in our hearts, whether we will keep the Divine commandments or not. These seasons of sadness are sometimes permitted to take us off from a false theology and a false rest. "For the spirit should fail before Me. Very instructive are those Scriptures, and very comforting, which tell us how largely the thought of our mortal frailness enters into the considerate care of Heaven. The uppermost thought which our subject should leave upon the mind, and which the heart should cleave to with all the energies of a loving faith is, that it goes very hard with God to afflict man at all; and that He has in some mysterious sense to wrestle with the conflicting powers of the Godhead before He can give up a soul altogether. It seems as if God could take every step towards the sinner's condemnation but the last. He can admonish, rebuke, threaten; but when it comes to smiting, then comes the hesitation, then begins God's strange work.

(D. Moore, M. A.)

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KJV: For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made.

WEB: For I will not contend forever, neither will I be always angry; for the spirit would faint before me, and the souls who I have made.