The conduct which we read of in the text seems to be nothing out of the way, nothing strange, nothing which we cannot enter into and cannot explain, but only an instance of what goes on now, and always has gone on since the beginning of the world; it is an instance of the hardening power of sin.
I. This is what makes a sin, even a little sin, enormously great when considered as the seed of the whole crop of sins afterwards, even as a single seed of the wrong kind may be enough to overrun a field with thistles. A single sin is but the leader of a whole band, and when once the barrier has been broken, a legion of others swarm in; and a single sin is but the beginning of the hardening process, is but the beginning of a state of disease which ends in utter blindness and want of feeling. This I understand by the deceitfulnessof sin to which the Apostle refers its hardening power; it is deceitful because what we call a small sin appears trifling, because we judge of sins merely in ourselves, without considering to what they lead; if in war a general were to see a few of the enemy's soldiers straggling over the hills, he mightsay that they were so few that they were not worth considering, but wouldhe say so? or would he not rather look upon them as the forerunners of a great army; would he not prepare at once to resist the hosts of enemies which he must know lurked behind? In like manner the sins of childhood are the forerunners of the great army of the world, the flesh, and the devil, which comes up in maturer years; and the only safe course is to look upon no sin as trifling, but to root out every enemy, whether small or great, lest perhaps we allow our enemy to gain such strength as shall end in our overthrow.
II. There is such a thing as being gospel-hardened; there is such a thing as listening to God's word, and to preaching, without doing, until the sound of the most solemn truths becomes as useless as that of a tinkling cymbal, until the sword of the Spirit is unable to cut or pierce. Persons who have become thus are like the king of Judah and his servants, who hear the threatened vengeance of Almighty God, and yet are not afraid, nor rend their garments.
Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons,1st series, p. 222.
References: Jeremiah 36:24. J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes,2nd series, p. 36; Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. i., p. 177.