I. The Wonderful Thought of God here.
This is an exclamation of disappointment; of thwarted love. The good which He purposed has been missed by man's fault, and He regards the faulty Israel with sorrow and pity as a would-be benefactor balked of a kind intention might do. O Jerusalem! 'how often would I have gathered thee.' 'If thou hadst known … the things that belong unto thy peace!'
II. Man's opposition to God's loving purpose for us.
To have hearkened to His commandments would have enabled Him to let His kindness have its way.
It is not only our act contrary to God's Law, but the source of that act in our antagonistic will, which fatally bars out the possibility of God's intended good from us. It is 'not hearkening' which is the root of not doing.
That possibility of lifting up our puny wills against the all-sovereign, Infinite Will is the mystery of mysteries.
The fact that the mysterious possibility becomes an actuality in us is still more mysterious. If we could solve those two mysteries, we should be far on the way to solve all the mysteries of man's relation to God, and God's to man.
A will absolutely submitted to Him is His great ideal of human nature. And that ideal we all can thwart, and alas, alas! we all do. It is the deepest mystery; it is the blackest sin; it is the intensest folly.
Sin is negative as well as positive. Not to hearken is as bad as to act in dead opposition to.
III. The lost good.