In this sermon, the preacher begins by expressing his deep desire to weep for those who are on the path to destruction. He exhorts the congregation to go out and preach the gospel, showing compassion and generosity to the poor, sick, and needy. He emphasizes the importance of prayer and writing down the sins and injustices around us. The preacher warns of the judgment day and the horrifying fate of those who reject God, urging the listeners to have a heart of compassion and weep for the lost. He concludes by questioning the lack of tears and empathy in the congregation, urging them to examine their own sin and need for salvation.

Jeremiah chapter 9 and verse number 1. Oh, that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people. There have been times in my life, in my ministry, that I have been in circumstances and situations where we were in a prayer meeting and weeping and tears and crying and praying would last for hours on end as some name or some person or some group of people were upon our heart and we were praying and interceding for them and weeping and tears would be a part of that prayer meeting. There have been times in my ministry where the ministry would become so difficult that I would find myself tearless, my compassion would be gone, my heart would be hardened, I would have a difficult time having sympathy or empathy for people and sometimes would have a wrong attitude toward tears and weeping. You know, sometimes tears are a base thing. They can be the offspring of a cowardly spirit. Some men weep when they should be resolved and many a woman weeps when she should resign herself to the will of God. Many of those tear drops are but expressions of childlike weaknesses and it would be well if we would wipe away those tears and a face of frowning we would remove so that this world could see a constant continence upon us. But upon the other hand, oftentimes tears are an index of strength. There are periods when they are the noblest things in the world. Abraham wept for Sarah at her funeral in Genesis chapter 23 and verse 2. Esau wept upon hearing of Jacob's treachery. Jacob wept for joy upon finding Rachel. Esau and Jacob both wept at their reunion. Joseph wept at the reunion of his brothers in Genesis 45. Israel wept for freedom in Egypt. Moses wept over Miriam's sin. Israel wept at the funeral of Aaron and Moses. Joshua wept over the defeat of Israel in Joshua 7. Naomi wept as she left Moab. Hannah wept over her barrenness. Samuel wept over fickle Israel. Samuel also wept over the failure of Saul. David and Jonathan both wept over Saul. And Saul in 1 Samuel 24 wept over his own stupidity. David wept at the murder of Abner and at his own great sin in Psalm chapter 32. David also wept at the death of his infant child. Elisha wept over the future cruelty of King Hazel. Joash wept at the death of Elisha. Some old Jews wept at the dedication of Zerubbabel's temple. Daniel wept over Israel's sin. Ezra wept over Israel's sin. Nehemiah wept over Jerusalem's broken walls. Mordecai wept over the wicked plot of Haman. Esther wept as she pleaded for her people. Job wept for his sons. Ammoniac in Ezra wept at the sight of Jesus. An immoral woman wept over her sin in Luke 7. A rich man wept in hell in Luke 16. Jesus wept over Lazarus and over Jerusalem in Luke 19. Some Jerusalem women wept for Jesus. Jesus wept at the Garden of Gethsemane. Mary Magdalene wept over Jesus. The disciples wept over the departure and the death of Christ. Peter wept over his sin. Paul wept over the Ephesian church and the Corinthian church. The Ephesian elders and the Christians at Caesarea wept over Paul. Timothy wept over his ministry. John wept over a seven-sealed book in Revelation 5. The faithful martyrs wept during the Tribulation in Revelation 7. And Israel and the nations will weep at the second coming of Christ. And this is just to name a few. It is no sign of weakness when a man weeps for sin. It shows that he has strength of mind. Yes, more, he has strength that is imparted by God which enables him to forswear his lust and overcome his passions and to turn to God with the full purposes of his heart. And there are other tears as well which are evidence not of weakness but of might. Let me quote to you the greatest preacher of recent centuries and that would be Charles Spurgeon who said, the tears of tender sympathy are the children of strong affection. He that loveth much must weep much. The unfeeling heart, the unloving spirit may pass from earth's portal to its utmost bound almost without a sigh except for itself. But he that loveth hath digged as many a wells of tears as he has chosen objects of affection. For by as many as our friends are multiplied, by so many must our griefs be multiplied too if we have love enough to share in their griefs and to bear their burden for them. The largest hearted man will miss many sorrows that the little man will feel but he will have to endure many sorrows the poor narrow minded spirit of man may never know. It needs a mighty prophet like Jeremiah to weep as mighty as Jeremiah did. In fact, Jeremiah was often called the weeping prophet because he wept so much over the sin of his people. He was also believed to be appropriately, and I believe this as well, to be the author of the book of the Bible entitled Lamentations. You see, Jeremiah was not weak in his weeping. The strength of his mind and the strength of his love were the parents of his sorrow. He did not weep and lament because of weakness nor did he proclaim evil because of a dark and gloomy personality. He cried out because of his love for his people and for his God. This characteristic of the prophet is actually a tribute, I believe, to his sensitivity and his deep concern. It reminds me of the weeping of the Savior in Luke 19 and 41 when he came upon a hill and overlooked his precious city Jerusalem. Yes, this is no expression of a whining presence but indeed it is the burst of a strong soul. It is the burst of a strong affection. It is strong in its devotion. It is strong in its self-sacrifice and I would to God this morning that we had more who could weep like Jeremiah wept. We would thus weep. We would weep for a lost world. The old adage is still true that one half of the world knows nothing of what the other half lives. Sin and iniquity abounds in this world even though we as Christians who so often have even appropriately guarded ourselves from the knowledge of this world and that is not such a bad thing. Maybe less knowledge keeps us from more temptation but I tell you today sometimes we forget how wicked and ungodly and filled with sin and transgression this world is filled with. How many of our sons and daughters and friends and relatives are slain by sin? I wonder today if we were to weep would we not be weeping this morning for the drunkenness of this land, the sin drunkenness of our culture? How many thousands of our race reel from the sin palaces into perdition? Listen to this poetic plea when one wrote what scenes hath the moon seen every night? Sweetly did she shine last evening? The meadows seemed as if they were silvered with beauty when she shone upon them but ah what sins were transacted beneath her pale sway? Oh God thou only knowest our hearts might be sickened and indeed we might cry. Alas I wonder how many young girls last night took their own life in the cut of a wrist or the jumping into a river to end it all because of sin's sway. I wonder last night if we would have walked into the hospitals or into the shelters or into prisons to talk with inmates might we not have seen the gigantic spread of enormous evil in our culture and yet we may even have sympathized with them as the thought of it in our spirit would cast us down low in our heart. We would feel that we would rather die than live while sin reigns and iniquity spreads. These are only a few of the evils. How many I wonder demons are devouring people every day all around us and we have dry eyes. Behold throughout this land people are falling every day by sin disguised even in the shape and the disguise of pleasure. They seem to have a smile on their face. They seem to have a skip in their walk but sin reigns and rules in their heart and destruction is in their very near future. I wonder last night had we been able to go out and notice everyone that was driving back home into our community if they would have had some kind of sign up on their truck or car that would let us know where they were coming from. How many of them would have been coming back from some place of sin, some casino or bar or other house of sin. How many today right in our own neighborhoods. I believe if we could know we would be able to fall upon our faces and weep and cry and pray for God to close such places and to gather these people from these places that are nothing more than gates to hell. Oh we would fall upon our face and cry out to God to raise up a group of people here on our own valley that would warn people against this sin sick society. If we were weepers we would weep for a lost world and even more so I believe we would weep for our own families. Mothers I know your grief. I know what has caused you to cry to God with weeping eyes for many a mournful hour because of a son, because of that offspring that has turned against you, because he that came forth from you has now despised his mother and his mother's God. Father I understand why you cry. You've carefully brought up that daughter and you nourished her when she was young and you had taken her fondly in your arms and she was the delight of your life but now she sinned against you and sinned against God. The child of your affection has now become the stinging adder stinging your heart. Sons and daughters and grandchildren and some of you even have parents that so often you mention them in your prayers but sometimes you feel like hope is fainting. I beseech you this morning to find a place of weeping. Be strong in your weeping for them. Parents don't leave weeping when it comes to weeping for your children. Don't become hardened towards them sinners though they may be. It may be that God will yet bring them to himself. Your weeping will not be in vain. Oh that we would weep like Jeremiah that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears. So much more in this text I wanted to preach but I could not get past that imagery. If my head were full of just water and my eyes were a fountain of tears that I might weep day and night. I wonder would we weep? How many weepers are in our congregation? How many of us weep for this world? How many of us weep for our own families? I ask you one last question this morning. How many of you weep for your own sin? Perhaps very few are here who would indulge in open and known sin. I understand that. Perhaps most of you belong to a good and amiable class who have every kind of virtue of whom it must be said though one thing thou lackest. That is thou lackest the saving power of Jesus Christ. Does it bring you to tears? There's been a many a time in my ministry in the few years that I've preached that I've been amazed and shocked by lost good people. There's been a many a times when I was just a teenager preaching in churches all across America that to my shock and amazement at first I became used to it after a while of church leaders and even pastors who would come forward during an invitation at the end of a sermon and fall in their face and weep and cry out to God because they were lost pastors, missionaries. I'll never forget one night in Lancaster, Texas I was preaching and at the end of the service we had given an invitation and nothing had happened all week. Every invitation had been just as solemn and dead and dry and seemed as if nothing was going to happen in that church all week but on that one particular night a young man, he was a missionary and working as the youth pastor of the church I was preaching in. He came forward and he knelt down at the altar, we called it an altar, a bench there. He began to weep and to pray and I thought to myself, thank God somebody in this church is broken over sin. He began to weep and to pray and prayed and wept and you could hear him weeping out loud and because of this others began to fall under conviction and they began to come forward. People's lives were changed that night and I just felt in my heart that that young man had some part in that as he wept and interceded for those in that church. As the invitation was going toward the end, we were about to dismiss the people, I noticed that that young man had never got up off his knees. He remained there praying and weeping and I became a little concerned as to what to do. I did not want to ask him to get up. I did not want to ask him to quit praying. I wasn't for sure whether or not to end the service. So I asked someone in the service to come up and we sang a special song and then we said some prayers from the pulpit and we were just doing things to kind of give more time for this young man to finish praying and interceding. Before long I realized he wasn't going to stop. He might be there all night. And so I decided to ask the people to stand to their feet and be dismissed. If anyone would like to stay and pray, they were welcome to do so. A few people left. The pastor came forward and he said, what do we do? I said, why don't we just get down here and pray. Well, you know what, several people were in the prayer benches that night weeping and praying. Time went by for so long that I lost track of how long we were there up on our knees. The young man had been praying and weeping and finally he got up on his feet and walked over to me and he said, Brother Jason, tonight I just, right there on my knees, I got saved. I've been praying and weeping over my own wickedness and my own sin. He said, Jason, I've led people to the Lord and they've gotten saved. I've been on the mission field and done the Lord's work. I've served in the church all of my life. I'm the youth pastor of this church. I'm the leader of the BSU in college. But tonight, tonight God saved me. And about that time that preacher jumped up and ran across the room and grabbed him and said, Son! That was his boy. Son, I love you. I love you and I had no idea but I'm so thankful you got saved. And they began to dance in front of that auditorium. Round and around they went. There was a lot of weeping that went on in that church that week and I wonder today, I wonder if God would put His finger upon some of you here. Oh, I believe you're a moral person. You're a good person. But alas, alas, you are dead in your trespasses in sin. Because you've never been renewed by the divine grace of God. So lovely yet without faith. So beautiful, so admirable, yet you're unconverted. When God brings people to the end of their life, when drunkards die, when swearers perish, when harlots and seducers sink in their fate that they have earned, we may well weep for such sinners. But I wonder this morning when those who've walked in our midst and have almost acknowledged the Lordship of Jesus Christ, when they come to the end of their life and are cast away because they lacked the one thing that they needed, I believe at that point it'll be enough for the angels of heaven to weep. Oh, members of our church, you may well take up the cry of Jeremiah when you remember what multitudes, even in our own midst, men who have a name that they live but they are dead. People who profess to be Christians but they're not Christians at all. People who are almost persuaded to obey the Lord, but yet they've never been partakers of the divine life of God. I ask you today, will we ever weep? I talk to you specifically, Mr. Lost Man or Woman. Will you weep for yourself? You say, weep for me? I'm in good health, I'm in riches, I'm enjoying life. Why weep for me? I need none of your sentimental weeping. Oh, but friend, we weep still because with the eye of faith we're able to look into the future. If you can live here always and never die, we probably would not weep for you, but by an eye of faith we can look forward into time when the pillars of heaven must totter, when this earth must shake, when death must give up its prey, when a great white throne will be set in the clouds of heaven and the thunder and lightnings of Jehovah will be launched in armies and the angels of God will be marshaled to their ranks. We look forward to that hour and by faith we see you standing before the judgment of God. We see His eyes fixed sternly upon you. We hear Him read from His book. We hear Him mark your shaking knees and your shaking body and sentence you with thundering wrath and it strikes your appalled ear. With faith eyes we look and see the horror come across your countenance. We mark the terror that's beyond all description when He cries, Depart, you that are cursed. We hear your shrieks and your cries as you scream out, Rocks hide us, mountains fall upon us. We see the angel with the fury brand pursuing you. We hear your last unutterable shriek of woe as you descend into the pit of hell. And I ask you if you could see it, will you too not weep? Oh that my head were waters and my eyes were a fountain of tears that I might weep over you who will be sentenced in the judgment and be driven away like a chaff into the unquenchable fire. And I wonder, how can we endure such thoughts and not weep? Can you Mr. and Mrs. Church member see men and women marching into a mad career of vice and sin, well aware of the wages of sin is death, will you not interpose so much as a tear drop for them? If not, we're more brutal than a beast. If not one tear can well in our eye, I believe our heart is as hard as a stone. I wonder what it would be like if some strong archangel could unbolt the gates of hell and for a solitary second permit the voice of wailing and weeping to come up to our ears. Oh how we would grieve. How we would walk out of this place today with our face in our hands and we'd walk the rest of our life on this earth in terror. Would our eyes ever dry? Oh that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears that I might weep for some of you that are going there this day. I ask you this morning, stand to your feet with me. I want to give you an exhortation. Go forth and preach the gospel. Preach it in every street, in every lane, in every community in this valley. You that have wealth, go forth and spend it on the poor and the sick and the needy and the dying and the uneducated and the unenlightened for the glory of God. For you that have time, go forth and spend it in deeds of goodness. For you that have power in prayer, go forth and find that closet to pray in. For you that can handle a pen, go forth and write down the iniquities that are around us. Record it. Write upon it. Write upon it. Meditate. Every one to his post I exhort you today. Every one to your gun for I call you today to battle. Now for God and for truth, for God and for the right, let every one of us know that as we know the Lord, we will fight under His banner with weeping eyes. Our God, I ask you today, I ask you to come now and stir up in our hearts the confidence, a greater diligence and more affection and earnestness that we may have in the future a cause to weep more than we have this very day.