The foolishness of increasing Divine judgments.
The plea of the prophet appears to be this: "You have run terrible lengths in sin; and you have seriously suffered from the consequences of sin; now why will you bring down fresh judgments upon your head through persisting in your infidelity" (comp. Ezekiel 18:31)? So serious, indeed, had been the penalties of transgression already that there seemed to be no part of the body politic upon which another stroke might fall; new inflictions must come upon old sores and wounds. "The two noblest parts of the human body are here selected to represent the body politic; and the extreme danger to which it was exposed is significantly set forth under the image of universal sickness and languor. There were no parts which did not suffer from the calamities which sin had entailed." Remember the expression of St. Paul (Romans 2:5), "After thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God."
I. ALL SINS ARE FOLLOWED BY JUDGMENTS. We say, by consequences; and we even admit that they are usually "unpleasant" consequences; but we must go further and admit that every sin—be it neglect, or be it willful disobedience, whether it concern the individual or the community—is attended by its appropriate and necessary result, and that this is always the Divine judgment. Sorrow waits on sin. Suffering follows sin. Moral deterioration is Divine judgment. Painful circumstance is Divine judgment. The old world sins, and comes under the judgment of the Flood. Sodom sins, and comes into the judgment of the Divine fires. David sins, and quarrel and curse break up his family and break his heart. Judgment always links on to sin, and no human power can snap the uniting tie. If we will enjoy sin we must bear suffering. Illustrate by the pagan conceptions of the Furies and the Fates. Something bad grows out of all sin; and "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
II. ALL JUDGMENTS ARE CHASTISEMENTS. It is impossible to associate punishment, as a mere exercise of tyrannical power, with God the great Father. In the long run, or in the short run, all Divine judgments must be proved to have been remedial in their design. It is quite beyond our province to decide to what extent the free-will, the self-will, of man may resist the remedial purpose of God's judgments. All we can say is, that a father's punishments must be, at the very heart of them, chastisements; and that the plea of the passage before us rests upon the fact that God had been smiting in order to correct, and was deeply grieved because his correcting purpose had hitherto been so successfully resisted. Illustrate how epidemics and plagues, following upon sanitary sins, are designed to correct sanitary evils. The same applies in moral spheres. From this point a review of God's dealings with us in our past lives may be taken, and we may be searchingly reminded how we have resisted the remedial influence of God's chastisements.
III. REFUSAL TO LEARN BY CHASTISEMENT IS FRESH SIN. This the prophet pleads. "You are further grieving God by this, that you will not be humbled; you will not learn; you will not let him lift his judgments off you." Illustrate by the hardened boy who will not respond to his father's punishment. That hardened resistance is a fresh sin.
IV. FRESH SIN INVOLVES FURTHER AND WORSE JUDGMENTS. Before, the judgment was but to reveal the evil character of the sin; now, the judgment has to bear upon the heart-hardness, and it must be more searching and severe. The secret of more than half our calamities and afflictions is, that they are second and sharper strokes because we would not heed the first. Israel was swept away into captivity at last, because she would resist the smaller national calamities that were gracious Divine persuasions to repentance. In a great measure it is true that our life-troubles are in our own hands. We suffer so much because we are such dull and unwilling scholars in the school of God.
V. THE WORST OF ALL WOES WOULD BE THE SUSPENSION OF DIVINE JUDGMENTS. There is no more terrible conception than that ordinarily awakened by the passage "Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone." The unspeakable calamity for a man or for a nation would be for God to lay down his chastening rod, and stop his judgments. There is hope for us so long as he will smite.—R.T.