Jeremiah 16:12 - Homiletics

Worse than your fathers.

I. EACH GENERATION SHOULD BE BETTER THAN THAT WHICH PRECEDES IT . The natural movement of all mankind should be onward and upward. We have the lessons of past history to warn and to inspire us; the continued, increasing, long-suffering mercy of God to urge us to serve him more faithfully; and the growing light of slowly accumulating knowledge to guide us into better paths. Later generations have more aids of Divine revelation than were vouchsafed to the earlier. The Jews under the prophets had more light, more Divine inducements to fidelity, than the Jews under Moses; and Christians have a much clearer light and much more powerful motives in the revelations of God's will and of God's love in Christ. To go back when we ought to go forward is doubly inexcusable. Christians are bad indeed if they fall lower than the men of Old Testament ages, and Protestants of modern times if they do not live up to the attainments of the Mediaeval Church.

II. EVIL INCLINES TO GROW WORSE FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION . Men ought to improve; but if they begin a course of evil they deteriorate in it. Nothing in the world is stationary. Nations are either progressing or retrograding. Each generation is either better or worse than its predecessor. Evil has a contagious property, and if it is unchecked it is certain to spread like an epidemic. It is a leaven that, left to itself, will surely leaven the whole mass. We should, therefore, seek to stamp out a sin in its earlier stages. We must not trust to any necessary law of progress, any idea of the inherent goodness of human nature, any thought of the temporary character of evil, but seek at once to resist and overthrow the sin. Here is a warning to parents. Evil tendencies are hereditary. The vice, which seems to do little harm in our own day, taking root and spreading, will break out into worse fruits in our children's time. How sad to leave only a bad example for our children to be referred to!

III. IF EVIL IS TO BE CONQUERED IT MUST BE BY SOME SUPERHUMAN METHOD . The natural laws of progress fail here. Depravity unchecked grows more depraved. Innumerable practical reforms, new systems of morality, draconian codes, etc; have been tried, and all in vain. Josiah made the experiment with his violent reformation, but it failed of anything but superficial good. Some are now trusting to sanitary improvements, to industrial progress, to popular education; but these too will not touch the root of the sore. The history of sin furnishes the greatest proof of the need of a Divine redemption if the world is ever to be saved. For this Christ came, and now the highest progress of the world is to be traced to that new influence of life which he introduced to turn the current of history from deepening depravity to growing truth and righteousness.