Actually, the core message of the gospel is that God has compassion for unwilling people.
God reproaches Israel. ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it’ (:15). Should this not mean the end for Israel? No, it means a new beginning. ‘Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore He will rise up to show you compassion’ (:18a). That means: He will rise up and act.
No, God will not turn a blind eye, for He is a righteous God! He does not leave unpunished the guilty (Numbers 14:18). He sent His son to this earth, Jesus Christ, Who took the punishment for all our sins upon Himself. With this, God gave proof that He wants to grant us mercy.
To whom will He grant mercy? To all who wait for Him. But who will wait for God when he is sailing before the wind? Therefore, the Lord gives the bread of adversity and the water of affliction.
Oh, people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more… How much the people of Israel have already wept! How many tears, how much more suffering has to come over them, before they give up on self-confidence and will really cry out to their God?
But what about us, who hear this? Did we recognize God in the adversity and the afflictions of our lives? How terrible it is, when our life is so alienated from God that we - in everything that happens - just see blind fate and not the hand of God. Then everything in this life is just good or bad luck. Then we will no longer cry out to God and no more be able to give ear to God’s answer: that in everything Jesus is the Way!