The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond.
The deep seated character of sin
I. What is sin? If you ask the Pharisee of old what sin was--“Well,” he said, “it is eating without washing your hands; it is drinking wine without having first of all strained out the gnats, for those insects are unclean, and if you should swallow any of them they will render you defiled.” Many in these days have the same notion, with a variation. We have read of a Spanish bandit, who, when he confessed before his father confessor, complained that one sin hung with peculiar weight upon his soul that was of peculiar atrocity. He had stabbed a man on a Friday, and a few drops of the blood of the wound had fallen on his lips, by which he had broken the precepts of holy Church, in having tasted animal food on a fast day. The murder did not seem to arouse in his conscience any feeling of remorse at all--not one atom--he would have done the same tomorrow; but an accidental violation of the canons of mother Church excited all his fears. Singular, indeed, are the ideas which many men have of transgression. But such is not God’s view of sin. Sin is a want of conformity to the will of God; sin is disobedience to God’s command; sin is a forgetfulness of the obligations of the relation which exists between the creature and the Creator. This is the very essence of sin. Injustice to my fellow creature is truly sin, but its essence lies in the fact that it is sin against God, who constituted the relation which I have violated. It is a great and intolerable wrong that, being created by God, we yet refuse to yield to His will. It is right that He who is so good to us should have our love: it is sin that, living upon God’s goodness, we do not return to Him our heart’s affection. It is right that, being sustained by Divine beneficence from day to day, we should give to Him constant thankfulness; but, being so sustained, we do not thank Him, and herein lies the very soul of sin. Now, in the light of this truth, let me ask the believer to humble himself very greatly on account of sin. That I have not loved my God with all my heart; that I have not trusted Him with all my confidence; that I have not given to Him the glory due unto His name; that I have not acted as a creature should do, much less as a new creature is bound to do; that, receiving priceless mercies, I have made so small a return--let me confess this in dust and ashes, and then bless the name of the Atoner who, by His precious blood, hath put even this away, so that it shall not be mentioned against us any more forever.
II. How is the fixedness of sin which is declared in the text proved? The prophet tells us that man’s sinfulness is as much fixed in him as an inscription carved with an iron pen in granite. How is this fixedness proved? It is proved in two ways in the text, namely, that it is graven upon the table of their heart, and secondly, upon the horns of their altar. It clearly proves how deeply evil is fixed in man, when we reflect that sin is in the very heart of man. When a sin becomes intertwisted with the roots of the affections, you cannot uproot it; when the leprosy eats deep into the heart of humanity, who can expel it? It becomes henceforth a hopeless case, so far as human power is concerned. Since sin reigns and rules in man’s affections, it is deep ingrained indeed. The second proof the prophet gives of the infixedness of human sin is, that it was written on the horns of their altars. These people sinned by setting up idols and departing from Jehovah: we sin in quite another way. When you get the unconverted man to be religious--which is a very easy thing--what form does the religion take? Frequently he prefers that which most gratifies his taste, his ears, or his sight. If your heart is touched, that is the worship of God; if your heart is drawn to God, that is the service of God; but if it is the mere ringing of the words, and the falling of the periods, and the cadence of the voice that you regard, why, you do not worship God, but on the very horns of your altars are your sins. You are bringing a delight of your own sensuous faculties and putting that in the place of true faith and love, and then saying to your soul, “I have pleased God,” whereas you have only pleased yourself. When men become serious in religion, and look somewhat to the inward, they then defile the Lord’s altar by relying upon their own righteousness. Man is much like a silkworm, he is a spinner and weaver by nature. A robe of righteousness is wrought out for him, but he will not have it; he will spin for himself, and like the silkworm, he spins, and spins, and he only spins himself a shroud. All the righteousness that a sinner can make will only be a shroud in which to wrap up his soul, his destroyed soul, for God will cast him away who relies upon the works of the law. In other ways men stain the horns of their altars. Some do it by carelessness. Those lips must be depraved indeed which even in prayer and praise still continue to sin. The horns of our altars are defiled by hypocrisy. You may have seen two fencers practising their art, and noticed how they seem to be seeking each other’s death; how they strike and thrust as though they were earnestly contending for life; but after the show is over, they sit down and shake hands, and are good friends. Often so it is in your prayers and confessions; you will acknowledge your sins, and profess to hate them, and make resolutions against them, but it is all outward show--fencing, not real fighting--and when the fencing bout is over, the soul shakes hands with its old enemy, and returns to its former ways of sin. Oh, this foul hypocrisy is a staining of the horns of the altar with a vengeance!
III. What is the cause of this? First, we must never forget the fall. We are none of us today as God made us. The human judgment is out of balance, it uses false weights and false measures. “It puts darkness for light and light for darkness.” The human will is no longer supple, as it should be, to the Divine will; our neck is naturally as an iron sinew, and will not bow to Jehovah’s golden sceptre. Our affections also are twisted away from their right bent. Whereas we ought to have been seeking after Jesus, and casting out the tendrils of our affections towards Him, we cling to anything but the right, and climb upon anything but the true. “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint.” Human nature is like a magnificent temple all in ruins. In addition, however, to our natural depravity, there come in, in the second place, our habits of sin. Well may sin be deeply engraven in the man who has for twenty, forty, fifty, or perhaps seventy years, continued in his iniquity. Put the wool into the scarlet dye, and if it lie there but a week, the colour will be so ingrained in the fabric that you cannot get it out; but if you keep it there for so many years, how shall you possibly be able to bleach it? You must recollect, in addition to this, that sin is a most clinging and defiling thing. Who does not know that if a man sins once, it is much easier to sin that way the next time, nay, that he is much more inclinable towards that sin? I may add that the prince of the power of the air, the evil spirit, takes care, so far as he can, to add to all this. He chimes in with every suggestion of fallen nature. He will never let the tinder lie idle for want of sparks, nor the ground lie waste for want of the seeds of thorns and thistles.
IV. What is the cure for all this? Sin thus stamped into us, thus ingrained into our nature, can it ever be got out? It must be got out, or we cannot enter heaven, for there shall by no means enter within those pearly gates anything that defileth. We must be cleansed and purified, but how can it be done? It can only be done by supernatural process. Your only help lies in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became the Son of Man that He might lift the sons of men up from their natural degradation and ruin. How does Jesus Christ then take away these deeply-inscribed lines of sin from human nature? I answer, He does it first in this way. If our heart be like granite, and sin be written on it, Christ’s ready method is to take that heart away. “A new heart also will I give you, and a right spirit will I put within you.” Next to that, inasmuch as the guiltiness of sin is as permanent as sin itself, Jesus Christ is able to take our guilt away. His dying upon the Cross is the means by which the blackest sinner out of hell can be made white as the angels of God, and that, too, in a single instant. The Holy Spirit also comes in: the new nature being given and sin being forgiven, the Holy Ghost comes and dwells in us, as a Prince in his palace, as a God in his temple. Do I hear any say, “Then, I would to God that I may experience the Divine process--the new nature given, which is regeneration, the washing away of sin, which constitutes pardon and justification, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, which insures final perseverance and complete sanctification. Oh, how can I have these precious things?” Thou mayst have them, whoever thou mayst be, by simply believing in Jesus. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The iron pen recording sins
When Bishop Latimer was on trial for his life, a trial which ended in his being burned at the stake, he at first answered without duly considering how much a single unguarded word might cost him. Presently he heard the pen of a secretary, who was seated behind the tapestry, taking down every expression which fell from his lips. It would be well for us all to remember that there is a pen now recording behind the curtain of the skies, our every evil deed and word and thought and that for all these things God will bring us into judgment. The iron pen suggests two thoughts.
1. The record which it makes is deep and indelible. So, also, with the items which are filling up page after page in the book of God’s remembrance. A wealthy English landlord was once guilty of an act of tyrannical injustice to a poor, helpless widow, who rented a small cottage from him. The widow’s son, whose blood boiled with indignation when he witnessed this, grew up to be a distinguished painter, and he portrayed the scene, and placed it where the eye of the cruel landlord must rest upon it. When the hard-hearted oppressor saw it, he turned pale, and trembled, and offered any sum for it, that the terrible picture might be destroyed.
2. The iron pen with its diamond point does not wear out. Be the record of one’s sins as long as it may, that record will assuredly be made. It is a moment of profound interest in the life of an antiquarian, when he drags forth from the sands of Egypt some ancient obelisk, on which the iron pen has engraved, so many ages ago, the portraits of those who, in the shadowy past, acted their part on the crowded theatre of a bustling world. This, however, is as nothing, compared with the disclosures of that day, when, from the stillness and silence of the grave, shall be brought out into the dazzling light of noon, tablets covered with the sculptured history of the soul; a history which no power nor skill can then erase. And thus the prophet would teach us, by the striking figure of the iron pen with its diamond point, that sin is no trifling thing; that one single violation of the Divine law does not pass unnoticed; and that they who die with the guilt of sins unrepented of, and unpardoned, resting on their souls, have nothing to expect but the outpouring of God’s terrible wrath. Vainly do we apologise for our shortcomings, on the ground of our natural bias to sin; or that the power of temptation proved too strong for us to resist. Forewarned, we ought to have been forearmed. Alas! who can contemplate his own sins against light and knowledge, against the strivings of conscience and the earnest pleadings of the Holy Spirit; who can count up his broken vows, and his contradictions of solemn confessions before God, and not tremble at the thought of the black catalogue which the iron pen has been writing down against him! When the great plague raged in London, in 1666, it was common to write over every infected house, “Lord, have mercy upon us!” Should the same inscription now be made over every abode where the plague of sin has entered, which of our habitations would not require to be thus labelled? (J. N. Norton, D. D.)
The inward registrar
Manton says: “If conscience speaketh not, it writeth; for it is not only a witness, but a register, and a book of record: ‘The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and the point of a diamond’ (Jeremiah 17:1). We know not what conscience writeth, being occupied and taken up with carnal vanities, but we shall know hereafter, when the books are opened (Revelation 20:12). Conscience keepeth a diary, and sets down everything. This book, though it be in the sinner’s keeping, cannot be razed and blotted out. Well, then, a sleepy conscience will not always sleep; if we suffer it not to awaken here, it will awaken in hell; for the present it sleepeth in many, in regard of motion, check, or smiting, but not in regard of notice and observation.” Let those who forget their sins take note of this. There is a chiel within you taking notes, and he will publish all where all will hear it. Never say, “nobody will see me,” for you will see yourself, and your conscience will turn king’s evidence against you. What a volume Mr. Recorder Conscience has written already! How many blotted pages he has in store, to be produced upon my trial. O Thou who alone canst erase this dreadful handwriting, look on me in mercy, as I now look on Thee by faith. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Sin ineradicable
The mind of man has been compared to a white sheet of paper. Now it is like a white sheet of paper in this, that whatever we write upon it, whether with distinct purpose or no, nay, every drop of ink we let fall upon it, makes an abiding mark, a mark which we cannot rub out, without much injury to the paper; unless, indeed, the mark has been very slight from the first, and we set about erasing it while it is fresh. In one of the grandest tragedies of our great English poet, there is a scene which, when one reads it, is enough to make one’s blood run cold. A woman, whose husband had made himself King of Scotland by means of several murders, and who had been the prompter and partner of his crimes, is brought in, while in her sleep, and continually rubbing her hands, as though she were washing them, crying ever and anon, “Yet here’s a spot. .. What! will these hands ne’er be clean?.. .here’s the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” In these words there is an awful power of truth. We can stain our souls; we can dye them, and double dye them, and triple dye them; we can dye them all the colours of hall’s rainbow; but we cannot wash them white. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten them, all the fountains of the great deep will not wash one little spot out of them. The usurping Queen of Scotland had been guilty of murder; and the stain of blood, it has been very generally believed, cannot be washed out. But it is not the stain of blood alone; every stain soils the soul; and none of them can be washed out. Every little speck of ink eats into the paper; every sin, however small we may deem it, eats into the soul. If we try to write over it, we make a deeper blot; if we try to scratch it out, the next letters which we write on the spot are blurred. Therefore is it of such vast importance that we should be very careful of what we write. In the tragedy which I was quoting just now, the queen says, “What’s done cannot be undone.” This amounts to the same thing as what I have written, in the sense in which I am now calling upon you to consider these words. What’s done cannot be undone. You know that this is true. You know you cannot push back the wheels of time, and make yesterday come again, so as to do over afresh what you did wrongly then. That which you did yesterday, yesterday will keep: you cannot change it; you cannot make it less or greater; if it was crooked, you cannot make it straight. You cannot turn back the leaves in the book of life, and read the lesson you have grabbed over again. That which you have written, you have written: that which you have done, you have done; and you cannot unwrite or undo it. (J. C. Hare.)
Sin leaves its marks
Even pardoned sins must leave a trace in heavy self-reproach. You have heard of the child whose father told him that whenever he did anything wrong a nail should be driven into a post, and when he did what was good he might pull one out. There were a great many nails driven into the post, but the child tried very hard to get the post cleared of the nails by striving to do right. At length he was so successful in his struggles with himself that the last nail was drawn out of the post. The father was just about to praise the child, when, stooping down to kiss him, he was startled to see tears fast rolling down his face. “Why, my boy, why do you cry? Are not all the nails gone from the post? Oh yes! the nails are all gone, but the marks are left.” That is a familiar illustration, but don’t despise it because of that. It illustrates the experience of many a grey old sire, who, looking upon the traces of his old sins, as they yet rankle in his conscience, would give a hundred worlds to live himself back into young manhood, that he might obliterate the searing imprint of its follies. Have you never heard of fossil rain? In the stratum of the old red sandstone there are to be seen the marks of showers of rain which fell centuries and centuries ago, and they are so plain and perfect that they clearly indicate the way the wind was drifting, and in what direction the tempest slanted from the sky. So may the tracks of youthful sins be traced upon the tablet of the life when it has merged into old age,--tracks which it is bitter and sad remorse to look upon, and which call forth many a bootless longing for the days and months which are past. (A. Mursell.)