Jeremiah 44:4

Natural indications of God's hatred of sin.

I. There are in this world gigantic tendencies which reveal themselves to our perception only by gentle and slight manifestations. The great magnetic influence which courses over the world will manifest itself to us in making a floating straw, cast loose on still water, gradually turn north and south. The vast tidal wave, that raises the ocean's level for thousands of miles along the coastline, reveals itself by a gradual cease of the ripple of some little brook up among inland cornfields. Now the tremendous truth that God sides with right against wrong, that right will ultimately vanquish and supplant and annihilate wrong, that any wrong-doer is in fact knocking his head against the universe—that truth is made plain to us by gentle indices oftentimes and by little things, and that truth is not much perceived by coarse and bad natures.

II. Yet there are indications. There is—(1) the serious judgment of our own conscience against all wrong, a testimony hardly ever wholly quenched. (2) The effect of many forms of sin in wrecking the health and abridging the life of the transgressor. A life of vice will not be a merry one, but it is likely to be a short one. (3) If you unscrupulously drive to the utmost the capacities of enjoyment that are in us, utter satiety and disgust will come speedily. Those capacities which, used in righteous moderation, yield enjoyment, overdriven bring loathing. (4) All the deeds we do go to strengthen the dispositions and habits from which they spring, forming us into a character from which, good or evil, we cannot escape; and thus already we see that wrong-doing, persevered in, ties the wrong-doer to misery and degradation, always growing more miserable and more degraded. You see at a glance how awful is the outlook here, and how it makes an end of the recreant thought that, after all, the sinner sometimes makes the best at least of this world, and he may make a quite new start elsewhere, none the worse. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

A. K. H. B., From a Quiet Place, p. 140.

Why does God hate sin?

I. Because it is contrary to His own nature.

II. Because it is unnatural in His creatures.

III. It transgresses holy, just, and good laws.

IV. It defiles and injures the entire human nature.

V. It makes men curses to each other.

VI. It ignores or rejects the Divine government.

VII. Wherever sin exists, except as it is checked by God's mercy, it has the dominion.

VIII. Wherever sin is introduced, it spreads.

IX. Sin requires God to inflict upon men of every class and kind, that which He assures us, upon His oath, He has no pleasure in.

X. Men's continuing in sin tramples under foot the blood of Jesus.

S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Pulpit, 2nd series, No. 8.

References: Jeremiah 44:4.—W. M. Taylor, Old Testament Outlines, p. 248; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 24; Preacher's Monthly, vol. viii.. p. 235. Jeremiah 44:29, Jeremiah 44:30.—P. Thomson, Expositor, 1st series, vol. x., p. 397. Jeremiah 45:5.—G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 293. Jer 45—S. Cox, Expositions, 2nd series, p. 205. Jeremiah 46:17.—Christian Chronicle, March 27th, 1884.