Isaiah. O that we may not thus provoke God to jealousy, and bring accumulated curses on our own heads, when we should be labouring by prayer and supplication to avert them x ! ]
3. The mourners —
[We hope there are some who possess a measure of Jere- miah's patriotism and piety, and who understand by experi- ence his exclamations in the text, " My bowels, my bowels ! I am pained at my very heart!" Would to God that we could see such a spirit universally prevailing ! There would be no doubt then of a happy termination of our troubles. Such per- sons indeed are too generally considered as gloomy enthusiasts : but they are the best friends of their country : they are the people who " stand in the gap;" they are the few righteous, for whose sake our Sodom has not long since been destroyed. Go on, beloved, like Nehemiah, Daniel, and other holy men, bewailing your own sins, and the sins of this whole nation : and then, if you should not be so happy as to see your efforts successful in relation to the kingdom at large, you may be assured that your labour will not be lost as it respects your own souls : your prayer shall return into your own bosom ; and your tears be had in remembrance before Gody.]
x Jer. xvii. 5 — 8. y Ezek. ix. 4.
god's bounties, and our ingratitude.
Jer. v. 23, 24. This people hath a revolting and a rebellious heart. They are revolted and gone : neither say they in their heart, Let us now fear the Lord our God, that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season : he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest.
AS Ministers of the Gospel, our chief employment is to open to you the hidden mystery of Redemption, and to present for your acceptance " the unsearchable riches of Christ." Yet there are times and seasons when we must assume somewhat of the sterner aspect of the prophets ; and, in the name of our Divine Master, address you in the language of reproof. The Jews, no doubt, were a stiff-necked people, and needed to be reproved in terms of the greatest seve- rity. Would to God that we, under our more liberal
1039."] god's bounties, and our ingratitude. 63
dispensation, were not obnoxious also to the same charge ! But really, the commission given to the prophet is far from being unsuitable to us at this time, or improper to be executed towards you : " De- clare this in the house of Jacob, and publish it in Judah, saying, Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding ; who have eyes, and see not ; who have ears, and hear not : Fear ye not me ? saith the Lord : will ye not tremble at my presence, who have placed the sand for the bound of the sea, by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it : and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail ; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it ? But this people have a revolting and a rebellious heart ; they are revolted and gone : neither say they in their heart, Let us fear the Lord our God, that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season : he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest."
In these words the prophet reproves the Jews,
I. For their contempt of God's authority —
They were indeed " a rebellious and gainsaying people a" —
[God had chosen them for his own peculiar people ; and had given them his law, written with his own hand on tables of stone. But from the very beginning they were a rebellious people, casting off their allegiance to God, and revolting from him, to the service of " gods that could not profit nor deliver them." And though God called them to him by a succession of prophets, " they refused to return to him ;" yea, " so bent were the whole nation to backslide from God, that none at all would exalt himV]