What iniquity have your fathers found in Me.
The evil nature of sin committed after conversion
I. Violation of solemn vows and covenant engagements. At that time we took Christ’s cause for our cause, His people for ours, His will for our law, His glory for our end, and Himself for our portion. Did we love Him too well then?
II. Without any provocation whatever on God’s part.
1. Was He wanting in forbearance when we were in rebellion?
2. Did He act unfeelingly when we were ruined, in that He gave His own Son to die for us?
3. Has He been a hard master since we entered His service?
4. Has He ever been a churlish father to us?
5. When we have returned to Him with our whole heart, has He not always been ready to receive us, and bury all in forgetfulness? (Daniel 9:7.)
III. Peculiar and horrible ingratitude.
1. He has given, not Egypt or Ethiopia for our ransom, but His own blood.
2. He has redeemed us, not from Egyptian thraldom, but “from the Power of darkness,” etc.
3. We never were supported by miracles in lonesome deserts of Arabia, but “having obtained help of God, we continue.”
4. We did not possess Canaan, but “God hath provided some better thing for us.”
IV. Extreme and singular folly.
1. It is a foolish exchange--of liberty for drudgery, peace for remorse, joyfulness for anguish, abundance for penury and misery.
2. It is singular folly. The people of the only true God alone prove untrue! (Andrew Fuller.)
Heaven’s appeal to the sinner
1. The sinner is divinely described.
1. Sin is departure from God. Alienation of sympathy and soul.
2. Sin is a progress of vanity. A going from the real to the unreal.
(1) The pleasures he seeks are unsatisfactory; all empty, and outside him.
(2) The honours he aspires to are unreal; neither enrich nor ennoble the soul.
II. The sinner is divinely challenged.
1. If iniquity were found in God, there would be some justification for apostasy.
2. The discovery of such iniquity is an absolute impossibility. (Homilist.)
God’s mercies should evoke gratitude
Selim, a poor Turk, had been brought up from his youth with care and kindness by his master, Mustapha. When the latter lay at the point of death Selim was tempted by his fellow servants to join them in stealing a part of Mustapha’s treasures. “No,” said he, “Selim is no robber! I fear not to offend my master for the evil he can do me now, but for the good he has done me all my life long.” May not many Christians learn a lesson from Selim?
Neither said they, Where is the Lord, that brought us up?--
Three shameful possibilities in human life
I. The possibility of dishonouring the great memories of life. “Neither said they, Where is the Lord?” etc. The dark night was forgotten, and Israel did not know who had lifted upon it the brightness and hope of morning.
1. The great memories of life are dishonoured--
(1) When the vividness of their recollection fades.
(2) When their moral purpose is over looked or misunderstood.
(3) When their strengthening and stimulating function is suspended.
2. What would human life be without its hallowed memories? Man must have facts as well as hopes,--something to which he can go back with confidence; back to some place where he met God. There is, however, a possibility of forgetting sacred scenes, and of cheating the soul of reminiscences which ought be a perpetual inspiration. Let each man find the proofs in his own history: Sickness, poverty, danger, etc.
II. The possibility of underestimating the interpositions of God.
1. Look at the case in the text,--through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and pits, through a land of drought and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt. Viewed prospectively, men shrink from such difficulties; viewed retrospectively, a good many of the terrors are forgotten. Granted that we have not the same outward difficulties, will any man deny that his moral pilgrimage is beset by many perils, and that the grave is constantly open at his feet? Not only was the dark side of history forgotten, but the bright side was overlooked. “I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof.” What was the result? Did they erect the altar, and bow in long-continued prayer, and unite in the loud, sweet psalm of thankfulness? “Ye defiled My land, and made Mine heritage an abomination.”
2. If we try our own lives by these historical disclosures, shall we shame Israel by our purity and love? Remember the Deliverer! Remember the Giver!
III. The possibility of the leading minds of the Church being darkened and perverted (Jeremiah 2:8). The priests, the pastors, and the prophets, all out of the way!
1. In all ages there have, of necessity, been foremost men; men whose capacity, culture, and Divine election have entitled them to leadership; men whom God Himself has acknowledged as the guides of the people. How easy it is for such men to succumb in periods of general corruption is too evident from universal history. What then?
(1) Such men should watch themselves with constant jealousy.
(2) Such men should never be forgotten by those who pray.
2. The most affecting of all subjects to contemplate is,--God grieved, God complaining! Would He complain without reason? Would He startle the universe for some trifling cause? It is as the cry of one whose heart is breaking; His great deliverances have been forgotten; His heritage has been defiled; His power has been despised, and His mercy been treated as an empty sentiment; what if the throb of His great sorrow should send a shudder of distress through the heavens and the earth! Look at Calvary for the full expression of all this Divine emotion. Seeing that such pain was inflicted by sin, let us avoid it as the abominable thing which God hates. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The priests said not, Where is the Lord?.. .the rulers also transgressed. .. and the prophets, etc.
The three ruling classes accused
1. The priests, part of whose duty was to “handle the law,” i.e., explain the Torah, to instruct the people in the requirements of Jehovah, by oral tradition and out of the sacred law books, gave no sign of spiritual aspiration; like the reprobate sons of Eli, “they knew not Jehovah,” that is to say, paid no heed to Him and His will as revealed in the book of the law.
2. The secular authorities, the king and his counsellors, not only sinned thus negatively, but positively revolted against the King of kings, and resisted His will.
3. The prophets went further yet in the path of guilt, apostatising altogether from the God of Israel, and seeking inspiration from the Phoenician Baal, and following worthless idols that could give no help. (C. J. Ball, M. A.)
The corruption and ignorance of the priests and prophets
Two centuries ago the religious state of the English-speaking world was bad, and was rapidly becoming worse. Infidelity was fast spreading among the people, and, consequently, there was an open and professed disregard of religion and morals. The secret of this sad state was simple. The clergy, though their lives in general might not be scandalous, were, as a rule, ignorant of all spiritual truth, and in too many cases even devoid of a sound intellectual apprehension of scriptural teaching. As Cowper, referring to those clergy, tersely put it--
“Except a few with Eli’s spirit blest,
Hophni and Phinehas may describe the rest.”