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I. The greatest JUDGMENT which can ever befall a people is taking the kingdom of God from them. The kingdom of God was taken by the Jews themselves for some peculiar and temporal blessings which those who enjoyed it had above all other people. It was taken by our Saviour for a clearer manifestation of the will of God to the world, and the consequence of that in the hearts of good men, and all the spiritual blessings which do attend it. So that the taking away the kingdom of God from them must needs be the heaviest judgment which could befall a people, since it implies in it the taking away all the greatest temporal and spiritual blessings. Jews make the kingdom of God to consist(1) in deliverance of them from their enemies;

(2) in the flourishing of their state, or that polity which God established among them;

(3) in the solemn worship of Him at the temple.All these were taken away. Take the kingdom of God in the sense our Saviour meant — the power of the gospel — and the judgment is yet more evident.

1. It is acknowledged by the Jews themselves that these great calamities have happened to them for some extraordinary sins.

2. The sin ought to be looked on as so much greater by how much heavier and longer this punishment hath been than any inflicted on them before.

3. The Jews have not suffered these calamities for the same sins for which they suffered before.

4. It must be some sin which their fathers committed, and which continues yet unrepented of by them to this day.There were these remarkable forerunners of desolation in the Jewish state which I am afraid we are too much concerned in.

1. A strange degeneracy of all sorts of men from the virtues of their ancestors.

2. A general stupidity and inapprehensiveness of common danger.

3. An atheistical contempt of religion.

4. Spiritual pride.

II. The greatest MERCY that can ever be vouchsafed to a nation is God's giving His kingdom to it.

(Bishop Stilligfleet.)

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KJV: Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?

WEB: Jesus said to them, "Did you never read in the Scriptures, 'The stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner. This was from the Lord. It is marvelous in our eyes?'