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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 3
Jeremiah 44:4—Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate.
There is a personal element in sin. It is not simply a violation of law, the law of the moral universe. It is against our own soul (Jeremiah 44:7), and, above all, it hurts the holy, loving nature of God, so that his Spirit cries out as in agony, "Oh, do it not!" There is something very pathetic in this cry, extorted by the sin of man from the heart of God. It reminds one of that cry of Jesus, "O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you, and suffer you?"
If any one suffers very keenly from nervous exhaustion, it seems sometimes almost impossible for him to bear the noise of a child who persists in running heavily overhead. He will adopt a pleading rather than an angry tone: "My child, do not do this again; I cannot bear it." Let us think of God’s holy nature as more sensitive to sin than the most highly strung nerves to noise, and hear Him saying, whenever we are on the point of committing sin, "Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate."
How greatly God hates sin is taught us in the Cross. In order to put it away He spared not his only-begotten Son, but yielded Him to the bitterness of Calvary.
And how greatly the blessed Son hates it is evident from the bloody sweat of Gethsemane, when the shadow of the great burden of a world’s guilt lay upon Him.
And how greatly must the Holy Spirit, whose temple is our body, hate any sin that defiles it! Thus the Holy Trinity, with one voice, pleads with thee, who meditates on evil. Beware of bringing pain into the heart of Infinite Love; but ask that some of God’s hate for sin may be yours.
