Jer. xiii. 27. Woe unto thee, 0 Jerusalem ! Wilt thou not be made clean ? When shall it once be?
THROUGHOUT all the sacred writings we be- hold the goodness and severity of God : sometimes the one attracts our notice, and sometimes the other ; and in many places, as in that before us, we are struck with the union and combination of them both. Jerusalem was the city of the living God, the resi- dence of his peculiar people; yet he denounces woe against them : but at the same time he declares, in very pathetic language, the ardent desires of his soul to exercise mercy towards them.
From these most affecting words we shall take oc- casion to shew,
I. The woes which impenitent sinners have reason to
expect — This is a painful, but necessary, subject of our in- quiries—
The punishment that awaits sinners is most tre- mendous—
[The loss of heaven is one part of it : and who shall declare
how great a loss this is ? The miseries of hell (which is
the other part) are equally beyond the powers of language to describe, or of imagination to conceive ]
This, however, the impenitent have but too much reason to expect —
[" Woe unto thee ! " says my text : and this is the voice of
reason a of Scriptureb of experience0
of the compassionate Saviour himself d What stronger
evidence can any man wish for ? and how blind must he be that is not convinced by it !]
But however merited and awful these woes are, we see from the text,
II. How unwilling God is to inflict them —
He complains of men's obstinacy in rejecting the overtures of his mercy —
a There must be a difference between the righteous and the wicked.
b Against ten thousand passages to this effect, there is not one syllable that has an opposite aspect.
c The union of sin and misery is felt by all. Where is there a sinner that is truly happy ? See Isai. lvii. 20, 21.
d See how often woe is denounced, Matt, xxiii. 13 — 16, 23, 25, 27, 29, 33,