"Ah, Lord God! surely thou," etc.
Inflicted infatuation, or the deceived of God.
I. THERE ARE SUCH. How else can they be described who, in spite of the plainest declarations of God against their wickedness, persist therein, persuading themselves that they have no cause to fear? Such was the way of these to whom Jeremiah spoke. They and their false prophets were continually saying, "We shall have peace" (cf. Jeremiah 5:12, Jeremiah 5:31). And there have been other instances (cf. Pharaoh, hardening his heart against God). And there are many now. The Bible speaks, providence speaks, conscience speaks, Christ's ministers speak, the Holy Spirit speaks pleading with them; but they heed not, they turn a deaf ear to every voice. What can this be called but infatuation? And it can only be explained as Jeremiah here explains it, as a Divine judgment. "Ah, Lord God! surely thou hast deceived them." The evidence that their course was one that must bring punishment was so glaring, so strong, so irresistible, that none but the infatuated could possibly disregard it. Now, it is the testimony the Word of God that such blindness is judicial, is from God. God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Our Lord refers more often than to any other Old Testament Scripture, to that word of Isaiah's which tells of the Divine will, that "seeing, they [his enemies] may see and not perceive, and hearing, they may hear and not understand." Men who will not hear come at length to find they cannot. So with Judah and Jerusalem; they were at this time "given up to a strong delusion, that they should believe the lie"—that peace could be their lot in spite of what they were. We speak of gospel-hardened men, and, alas! we too often see such. And this is in keeping with God's law of habit—a law most beneficent to those who obey him, but terrible in its effects on the disobedient. For separate actions crystallize into habits, whereby such actions, no matter what their character, become easy to us, and at last can be performed without any effort of our will. So that separate acts of obedience to God will at length become a blessed and holy habit of obedience, and separate acts of sin repeated again and again will become a direful habit of sin, from which we cannot break away. And because all this is in accordance with a Divine law, therefore God is said to harden men's hearts, to hinder their understanding of his Word, to give them over to strong delusions and, as here, to "deceive the people."
II. THE CAUSE IS CLEAR. Verse 18, "Thy way and thy doings have procured these things unto thee." It is from no decree of reprobation, from no predestination to sin, but from the inevitable action of the law of God which ordains that "ways" and "doings" such as Judah's were shall at length so utterly deceive those who are guilty of them that the most glaring falsehood is not too glaring for them to believe.
III. ITS DOOM IS JUST. Is it unjust that a man shall be filled with the fruit of his own ways? that what a man soweth that he shall also reap? Holiness must become impossible if its opposite be not possible too. The same law necessitates both. It is no arbitrary infliction, but the natural outcome of what a man has been and of what he has persistently done. It is as natural as that the harvest should follow the sowing of its own seed. The most dreadful element in the sinner's doom—the worm that dieth not—will be the ever-present reflection that he has brought it all upon himself. He himself made the bed on which he has to lie. And if still the doom of these wicked men be objected to, as it is, we reply, remembering how it is ever the necessity of any moral condition to be seeking to assimilate its surroundings to itself, so that goodness seeks to make others good, and evil seeks to make others evil—remembering this we say, with the late Dr. Arnold, "It is better that the wicked should be destroyed a hundred times over than that they should tempt those who are yet innocent to join their company." And this is what they would be sure, from the very necessity which arises from what they are, to be ever seeking to accomplish. Therefore we say their doom is just.
IV. THE AWAKENING AWFUL. (Verse 9.) See the picture of dismay and despair which the prophet draws (cf. Revelation 6:17). Self-deception, however hardened into habit by long years' use, cannot endure forever. There will be an awakening.
V. THE LESSON PLAIN. Break away at once from sin lest it coil round thee like a serpent, lest repeated transgression become links, and the links a chain which will bind thee so fast that thou canst not escape. Therefore break away now, turn to the Lord Jesus, invoke his aid, day by day look to him, and thou art saved.—C.