Jeremiah 2:19 Your own wickedness shall correct you, and your backslidings shall reprove you… I. INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 1. Men in general think lightly of sin. They consider it rather as a failure or infirmity of nature, than as positive transgression, guilt, or vileness. Nay, "fools make a mock of sin." 2. The great reason why men think so lightly of sin is, that they think lightly of God. Our judgment of anything is always in proportion to our esteem or disesteem of its opposite. God and sin are two contraries; and we will unavoidably form our estimate of sin, according to that which we form of essential holiness. 3. There is an infinite evil in sin. This may appear impossible, because man, its subject, is a finite being. But although viewed in man, or in any creature, as its subject, it can be only finite; with respect to God, the object against whom it is directed, it is infinitely evil: for it is an affront to His infinite perfections. 4. All sin has an infinite evil in it. The guilt of one sin exposes to eternal wrath. The least sin implies in it ingratitude, unbelief, rebellion, and atheism. II. THE EVIL OF SIN. 1. Because contrary to the nature of God, who is the supreme standard of truth and righteousness. Men may talk as they will of moral rectitude and the fitness of things. But these are terms without meaning, unless we understand them as relating to the perfections of the Divine nature; for there can be no notion of rectitude, fitness, or propriety, abstracted from the nature of God. 2. Because contrary to His holy law. This notion of sin is usually illustrated by the situation of a person under a bodily disease, who not only labours under the want of a proper temperament of humours, but hath a positive disorder among them. So sin, which is a moral disease, not only implies a want of proper conformity to the law, but a real opposition to it. 3. It is an attempt against the moral government of God in the world. This is the necessary result of its being a transgression of the law. 4. It is abominable to God. Nothing else in the universe is the object of Divine hatred, or nothing else but on account of sin. 5. That sin is an evil thing is evident from that malignity which is in its nature. Does the justice of God proclaim the guilt of sin? Do we learn its filth from its contrariety to Divine holiness? Its malignity also appears by its opposition to the alluring perfection of love. 6. Because it makes man the slave of Satan. By the law of his creation, he is the subject of God. To Him he owes his service, and to Him only.Inferences — 1. That those who have never seen sin to be evil and bitter have no fear of God. 2. The danger of entertaining trivial thoughts of sin. 3. The dreadful ingratitude that is in sin. 4. The impossibility of delivering ourselves from sin. The necessity of washing in the blood of Christ. III. THE BITTERNESS OF SIN. 1. Sin is so bitter in its consequences that it has deprived us of all good. It has robbed us of the Divine image and favour. 2. Sin has subjected us to all penal evil. The curse of the law; afflictions; death 3. Sin has introduced disorder into the whole creation of God. IV. BY WHAT PROOFS SINNERS MAY KNOW AND SEE THAT SIN IS EVIL AND BITTER. 1. By the commands and threatenings of the law. It threatens death in all its extent: temporal, spiritual, and eternal. 2. By terrors of conscience. 3. From the complaints of God's people, on account of sin. They everywhere, when rightly exercised, represent it as their heaviest burden; and however great their afflictions, they consider sin as greater than any ether. 4. By the punishments inflicted on sinners in this life. Flood: Sodom and Gomorrah. 5. Many see and know the evil and bitterness of sin by their own eternal misery. Hell. 6. In the sufferings of the Son of God. (J. Jamieson M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts. |
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