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The sermon presents humanity as guilty before God, unable to establish righteousness through religious observance or good works. Sin is portrayed as deserving divine wrath, producing ruin in the present, and culminating in final judgment and eternal punishment. Yet God graciously invites sinners to come through Christ, whose finished work alone provides forgiveness and righteousness. The appropriate response is urgent repentance, confession, and faith in Jesus, while Christians are called to serve fruitfully and seek the salvation of others.
Theological center: Salvation is received by trusting wholly in Christ’s blood and righteousness, not by moral or religious works, while sin brings certain judgment and eternal punishment.
Applications: Examine your life honestly · Reject self-righteousness · Confess sin and trust Christ · Flee to Jesus today
Primary texts: Jeremiah 8:6 · Romans 3:20 · Galatians 3:10
“What have I done?” Jeremiah 8:6 PERHAPS no figure represents God in a more gracious light than those figures of speech which represent Him as stooping from His throne, and as coming down from heaven to attend to the wants and to behold the woes of mankind. We must have love for that God, who, when Sodom and Gomorrah were reeking with iniquity, would not destroy those cities—although He knew their guilt and their wickedness—until He had made an actual visitation to them and had sojourned for a while in their streets. Methinks we cannot help pouring out our heart in affection to that God of whom we are told that He inclines His ear from the highest glory and puts it to the lip of the faintest that breathes out the true desire. How can we resist feeling that He is a God whom we must love, when we know that He regards everything that concerns us, numbers the very hairs of our heads, bids His angels protect our footsteps lest we dash our feet against stones, and marks our path, and orders our ways? But especially is this great truth brought near to man’s heart, when we recollect how attentive God is, not merely to the temporal interests of His creatures, but to their spiritual concerns. God is represented in Scripture as waiting to be gracious, or in the language of the parable, when His prodigals are yet a great way off, He sees them—He runs and falls upon their neck and kisses them. He is so attentive to everything that is good, even in the poor sinner’s heart, that to Him there is music in a sigh and beauty in a tear. And in this verse that I have just read, He represents Himself as looking upon man’s heart and listening—listening, if possibly He may hear something that is good. “I hearkened and heard; I listened; I stood still, and I attended to them.” And how amiable does God appear when He is represented as turning aside, as it were, with grief in His heart, exclaiming, “I did listen, I did hearken, but they spake not aright; no man repented of his wickedness, saying, ‘What shall I do?’” Ah! my hearer, you never have a desire towards God which does not excite God’s hope. You never breathe a prayer towards heaven which He does not notice. And though you have very often uttered prayers which have been as the morning cloud and as the early dew that soon pass away, yet all these things have moved JEHOVAH’s heart—for He has been listening to your cry and noticing the breathing of your soul, and though it all has passed away, yet it did not pass away unnoticed, for He remembers it even now. And oh! you that are this day seeking a Savior, remember—that Savio…