Jeremiah 9:25-26 - Homiletics

Impartial justice.

I. SPECIAL PRIVILEGES DO NOT INTENSE WITH THE IMPARTIAL EXERCISE OF DIVINE JUSTICE . Judah is specially privileged, and prizes circumcision as a seal of the peculiar favor of Heaven ( Genesis 17:9-14 ). Yet Judah must take its place in the indiscriminate catalogue of corrupt nations. If privileges are noted in God's exercise of justice, this can only be as an aggravation of guilt. The citizens of favored nations, the heirs of rank and wealth, persons whose lives have been peculiarly successful and unvisited with the usual amount of trouble, all stand in this position. Their present happy condition is no guarantee for favor in the day of Divine judgment, but, on the contrary, a reason for regarding the ingratitude of sin as, in their case, the more culpable.

II. THE OBSERVANCE OF EXTERNAL ORDINANCES HAS NO INFLUENCE ON THE IMPARTIAL EXERCISE OF DIVINE JUSTICE . Their utility is solely as regards their effect on men. They are profitable only in so far as they assist the corresponding spiritual acts, which are all that God takes note of ( Colossians 2:11 ). The circumcised in body who are not circumcised in heart will suffer just as if they had never been circumcised at all. The ordinance without the spirituality is an offence rather than a pleasing thing. It shows knowledge; it is a mockery to God. This must be so,

III. NO EXCEPTIONS WILL BE MADE TO THE IMPARTIAL EXERCISE OF DIVINE JUSTICE . All kinds of nations are classed together. Cultivated Egyptians and wild Arabs, scrupulous Jews and idolatrous Ammonites, all come before the same judgment-bar, all have the same fair trial-and righteous sentence.

1. The heathen are not excluded from God ' s judgment; for

2. The Jews and professedly religious are not excluded. Many people make an utterly unwarrantable assumption that their respectability, position in the Church, etc; are such that the stern ordeal of the judgment is not for them. In his vision of judgment Christ made no such exceptions ( Matthew 25:31-46 ).