Jeremiah 9:12-16 - Homiletics

The causes of national disaster.

I. IT IS PROFITABLE TO INQUIRE INTO THE CAUSES OF NATIONAL DISASTER .

1. Intellectually , this is a subject of profound interest, dealing with fundamental principles and the vast issues to which they lead when working on the largest scale.

2. Morally , it is of great practical importance for the warning it supplies to all nations. The sight of terrible ruin rushing down upon a people is appalling, but the awe with which it strikes us will not have much whole- some effect till we have an intelligent appreciation of the sources from which it comes, and are thus enabled to watch them and guard against them.

II. SPIRITUAL WISDOM IS REQUISITE FOR THE DISCERNMENT OF THE CAUSES OF NATIONAL DISASTER . They do not lie on the surface. No study is more difficult than that of the philosophy of history. Unless the mind is awake to spiritual facts, the inquiry will not go beyond secondary causes, or attempting more will commit injustice. The prophets needed inspiration for this as much as for the prediction of future events. No mere literary historian is fit for the work. Only a prophet can he fully equal to it, and other men can only pursue it with safety when they walk in his footsteps. Hence the immense value of the historical elements of the Old Testament to the statesman.

III. THE CHIEF CAUSES OF NATIONAL DISASTER ARE MORAL . Material causes are visible on the surface, such as famine, plague, invasion, revolution. Political causes lying deeper may be easily discerned, such as diplomatic complications, class divisions, violent changes in popular sentiment. But beneath all such influences there are great moral causes.

1. These act through providence . God takes note of the conduct of nations, judges, ministers.

2. They also act directly . Luxury is enervating; injustice destroys the confidence of a people in its government, etc.

IV. ONCE REVEALED , THE MORAL CAUSES OF NATIONAL DISASTER ARE SIMPLE AND INTELLIGIBLE . The prophets make these clear to us in the case of their own nation.

1. Negatively, the causes were traced to disobedience to the will of God, culpable because this was well understood—" set before them."

2. Positively, they were found in willful stubbornness and demoralizing idolatry . God was the shield of his people. When he was forsaken they were defenseless. Nations are only secure while they are governed by the will of God, by justice and humanity. Godlessness, bearing fruit in falsehood, cruelty, and vicious lawlessness of passion, is a sure source of national ruin. The state of the public conscience is more important to a nation than that of its army.