(vide Jeremiah 43:8-13).
The condition of hardened sinners desperate.
I. WHY IS IT SO?
1. Because repeated warnings have been rejected. (Jeremiah 44:4, Jeremiah 44:5.) These have been inspired and infallible. Had they believed ever so little they might have trusted implicitly what was spoken, accompanied as it was with such miraculous credentials. We, in these last times, have had the Lord himself. He has revealed the heart of the Father.
2. Because the lessons of experience have been ignored. (Jeremiah 44:9, Jeremiah 44:10.) How terribly severe had not these been! It was scarcely possible for greater temporal punishments to be inflicted. Yet it was in the discipline of these judgments they were to have been saved. The path of transgressions, as the sinner looks back upon it, is marked by ruin and death. Yet will he not repent.
3. Their persistent disobedience is an intolerable offence to God. (Jeremiah 44:8.) God's judgments are not exhausted, but his patience may be. The history of offence and punishment will not repeat itself indefinitely. There are abysses of wrath. There is an eternal fire. Let them beware lest they be utterly consumed.
II. WHAT ARE THE SIGNS THAT IT IS SO?
1. The Word of God is wholly against them, The indictment has no redeeming feature.
2. The pathos and pitifulness of God's entreaty. (Jeremiah 44:4, Jeremiah 44:7.) There is compassion in the Divine mind because of the consequences that impend. Who so able to understand the sinner's circumstances as his Father? He who can see before and after, and who can fathom the mystery of iniquity, fears for his erring child.
III. WHAT ELEMENT OF HOPE, IF ANY, IS STILL LEFT FOR THEM?
1. God still pleads. Silence would mean hopelessness. Whilst his servant is authorized to speak, there may remain a way of escape.
2. The fatherly compassion his voice betrays. There are tears in the entreaty: "Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate!" It is the birth cry of an evangel; a prophecy of Jesus. Mercy may move and melt where judgment has failed. "For the love of Christ constraineth us," etc. (2 Corinthians 5:14); "But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).—M.