Jeremiah 6:15

They were not at all ashamed.

Shamelessness in sin, the certain forerunner of destruction

He who has thus sinned himself past feeling, may be justly supposed to have sinned himself past grace.

1. Extraordinary guilt. “Committed abomination.”

2. Deportment under guilt. “Not at all ashamed,” etc.

3. God’s high resentment of their monstrous shamelessness. “Were they ashamed?”

4. The consequent judgment. “Therefore shall they fall,” etc.

I. What shame is and what influence it has upon the government of men’s manners.

1. Shame is a grief of mind springing from the apprehension of some disgrace brought upon a man. And disgrace consists properly in men’s knowledge or opinion of some defect, natural or moral, belonging to them. So that when a man is sensible that anything defective or amiss, either in his person, manners, or the circumstances of his condition, is known, or taken notice of, by others; from this sense or apprehension of his, there naturally results upon his mind a certain grief or displeasure, which grief properly constitutes the passion of shame.

2. From this, that shame is grounded upon the dread man naturally has of the ill opinion of others, and that chiefly with reference to the turpitude or immorality of his actions, it is manifest that it is that great and powerful instrument in the soul of man whereby Providence both preserves society and supports government, forasmuch as it is the most effectual restraint upon him from the doing of such things as more immediately tend to disturb the one and destroy the other.

3. He whom shame has done its work upon, is, ipso facto, stripped of all the common comforts of life. The light is to him the shadow of death; he has no heart nor appetite for business; his very food is nauseous to him. In which wretched condition having passed some years, first the vigour of his intellectuals begins to flag and dwindle away, and then his health follows; the hectic of the soul produces one in the body, the man from an inward falls into an outward consumption, and death at length gives the finishing stroke, and closes all with a sad catastrophe.

II. By what ways men come to cast off shame and grow impudent in sin.

1. By the commission of great sins. For these waste the conscience, and destroy at once. They are, as it were, a course of wickedness abridged into one act, and a custom of sinning by equivalence. They steel the forehead, and harden the heart, and break those bars asunder which modesty had originally fenced and enclosed it with.

2. Custom in sinning never fails in the issue to take away the sense and shame of sin, were a person never so virtuous before. First, he begins to shake off the natural horror and dread which he had of breaking any of God’s commands, and so not to fear sin; next, finding his sinful appetites gratified by such breaches of the Divine law, he comes to like his sin and be pleased with what he has done; and then, from ordinary complacencies, heightened and improved by custom, he comes passionately to delight in such ways. Finally, having resolved to continue and persist in them, he frames himself to a resolute contempt of what is thought or said of him.

3. The examples of great persons take away the shame of anything which they are observed to practise, though never so foul and shameful in itself. Nothing is more contagious than an iii action set off with a great example; for it is natural for men to imitate those above them, and to endeavour to resemble, at least, that which they cannot be.

4. The observation of the general and common practice of anything takes away the shame of that practice. A vice a la mode will look virtue itself out of countenance, and it is well if it does not look it out of heart too. Men love not to be found singular, especially where the singularity lies in the rugged and severe paths of Virtue.

5. To have been once greatly and irrecoverably ashamed renders men shameless. For shame is never of any force but where there is some stock of credit to be preserved. When a man finds that to be lost, he is like an undone gamester, who plays on safety, knowing he can lose no more.

III. The several degrees of shamelessness in sin.

1. A showing of the greatest respect, and making the most obsequious applications and addresses to lewd and infamous persons; and that without any pretence of duty requiring it, which yet alone can justify and excuse men in it.

2. To extenuate or excuse a sin is bad enough, but to defend it is intolerable. Such are properly the devil’s advocates.

3. Glorying in sin. Higher than this the corruption of man’s nature cannot possibly go. This is publicly to set up a standard on behalf of vice, to wear its colours, and avowedly to assert and espouse the cause of it, in defiance of all that is sacred or civil, moral or religious.

IV. Why it brings down judgment and destruction upon the sinner.

1. Because shamelessness in sin always presupposes those actions and courses which God rarely suffers to go unpunished.

2. Because of the destructive influence which it has upon the government of the world. It is manifest that the integrity of men’s manners cannot be secured, where there is not preserved upon men’s minds a true estimate of vice and virtue, that is, where vice is not looked upon as shameful and opprobrious, and virtue valued as worthy and honourable. But now, where vice walks with a daring front, and no shame attends the practice or the practisers of it, there is an utter confusion of the first dividing and distinguishing properties of men’s actions; morality falls to the ground, and government must quickly follow. And whenever it comes to fare thus with any civil State, virtue and common honesty seem to make their appeal to the supreme Governor of all things, to take the matter into His own hands, and to correct those clamorous enormities which are grown too big and strong for law or shame, or any human coercion.

V. What those judgments are.

1. A sudden and disastrous death; and, indeed, suddenness in this can hardly be without disaster.

2. War and desolation.

3. Captivity. (R. South, D. D.)

The shamelessness of sinners

The legend says that, a sinner being at confession, the devil appeared, saying, that he came to make restitution. Being asked what he would restore, he said, “Shame; for it is shame that I have stolen from this sinner to make him shameless in sinning; and now I have come to restore it to him, to make him ashamed to confess his sins.”

Neither could they blush.

Blushing

(with Ezra 9:6):--“Just fancy,” said Tom, who had been doing a bit of word study by the aid of his newly-acquired Skeat, “to blush is, in its origin, the same word as to blaze, or to blast, and a blush in Danish means a torch.” “And a very good origin too,” said his sister, who got red in the face and hot all over on the slightest provocation. Yes, youth is the blushing time of life. Said Diogenes to a youth whom he saw blushing: “Courage, my boy, that is the complexion of virtue.”

I. There is the blush of guilt. Who broke the window? All were silent; but one boy looked uneasy. His blush was the blast of his red-hot conscience, condemning the dumb tongue.

II. There is the blush of shame. It was such a mean thing to tell that lie to one’s own father. It was a shabby trick I played my chum. And that nasty word I spoke yesterday to a girl, too, it makes me sick-ashamed of myself to think of it. Yes; you ought to think shame. But “the man that blushes is not quite a brute.”

III. There is the blush of modesty. Tom said nothing about his splendid score at the match, until his sister read aloud at breakfast next morning the flattering report given in the newspaper, at which Tom blushed like a girl. He had his revenge, however, when more than one letter came to Shena from Dr. Barnardo, and Tom protested that he knew now why she had no money to spend on sweets, and poor Shena got very red in the face and went out of the room.

IV. There is the blush of honest indignation at the meanness of the cheat, the cruelty of the bully, the greed of the glutton, and the indifference of selfish souls. This blush of virtuous anger must have come into the meek face of Christ, when He rebuked the disciples for keeping the mothers from bringing their children to Him.

V. Just twice, I think, do we read of blushing in the Bible, and the solemn thing is that the blush in both cases is not before men, but under the eye of God.

1. One of the most remarkable prayers in the Bible is the prayer of Ezra, the scribe--the brave, good, holy man who led a company of his Israelite brethren from Babylon to Jerusalem. It rises hot and passionate out of his very heart; for, like all priestly souls, he makes all the sins of the people his own. “O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to Thee, my God.” He loved his people so dearly that their faults seemed to be his own, and he blushed before the Holy God for shame of them.

2. Quite at the opposite pole of feeling is the other place in the Bible where blushing is spoken of. For Jeremiah, the broken-hearted prophet of the Lord, uses it when he has to describe the utter callousness of the people, in spite of all their sins and sorrows. “They were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush.” That is surely the most hopeless state of all, when one has lost the very power to feel shame and sorrow before God. The Florentines used to point to Dante in the street, whispering, “There’s the man who has been in hell.” But hell has come into the heart of the man who cannot blush. Oh, it is better, as Mahomet said in his old age, to blush in this world than in the next. St. John of the eagle eye and loving heart tells us that in the great day of judgment we shall either have the boldness or liberty and confidence of children, or we shall shrink away with shame “like a guilty thing surprised.” (A. N. Mackray, M. A.)