JEREMIAH The Tender-Hearted Prophet of the Nations
FOREWORD by W. J. HOCKING
1938
FOREWORD
Jeremiah's prophecies began in the thirteenth year of
Josiah, king of Judah, and continued after the destruction of Jerusalem by
Nebuchadnezzar some forty years later. His testimony was therefore rendered at
the time when the kingdom of David was about to be abolished as a national
witness for Jehovah in the earth.
There is some analogy in moral character
between the last days of Judah and the last days of the church, and as the
various truths delivered by Jeremiah were chosen by the Spirit to suit the
condition of the Jewish people, this Book has great practical value in the
present times. Many salutary lessons of faithfulness and obedience amid
prevailing weakness and confusion may be gathered from the prophet's own
experiences and from the messages he received from the Lord. These are as
needful today as then.
To his office as a spokesman for Jehovah, Jeremiah
was sanctified from birth, and he is distinguished among his fellow-prophets of
the Old Testament as a prophet to the nations. Jerusalem was set in the midst
of the Gentiles as the centre of divine government in the earth. Before the
city of Zion was destroyed by the Gentiles, Jeremiah's is the last voice to
utter from that centre the word of Jehovah to Judah and Israel and to the
surrounding nations.
The prophet himself was a man of keen sensibilities
and tender feeling, much hated and despised by his fellow-countrymen for the
fidelity of his prophetical service to them. His personal sorrow and actual
suffering arose both from his fervent zeal for the glory of Jehovah and from
his intense affection for his fellow-Jews. Throughout the Book, the pious
exercises of Jeremiah's heart are displayed upon the dark background of the
inveterate evil in the hearts of the men of Judah and Jerusalem.
Some of
Jeremiah's prophecies have been fulfilled, while others still await fulfilment.
In the former class are included the return of Jewish captives from Babylon
after an exact period of seventy years, and also the destruction of the empire
of Babylon itself, the first great Gentile power to which world-dominion was
entrusted by God at the displacement of Israel.
Among those of his
prophecies as yet unfulfilled is that relating to the restoration of both
Israel and Judah to be Jehovah's peculiar people in the earth, when all the
families of Israel will return in prosperity under the direct rule of the
long-promised Son of David, Jehovah's righteous Branch and Israel's King. But
this introduction of the new and everlasting covenant, which the prophet
foretold, will not take place until they have passed through the unprecedented
period of Jacob's trouble, the great tribulation out of which the remnant will
be saved.
In the comparatively brief outline by the late William Kelly,
these and other topics in the Book are indicated as and where they occur. This
outline has been prepared from records of his oral ministry. Without being an
exposition of Jeremiah's prophecies in their entire range, the outline forms a
valuable introduction to their study, a study which cannot be neglected without
spiritual loss in this day of appalling declension in the Christian profession
and of growing antagonism in the political world.
W. J. HOCKING
31st
October 1937
JEREMIAH
THE
different character and style of Jeremiah as compared with Isaiah must strike
any careful reader. Here we have not the magnificent unfoldings of the purposes
of God for that earth of which Israel was the centre, but we have the prophecy
in its moral dealing with the souls of the people of God. No doubt, judgments
are pronounced upon the heathen, still the intention was to act upon the
conscience of the Jew, and in order to do this we see how much the Spirit of
God makes of Jeremiah's own experience. Of all the prophets we have none who so
much analysed his own feelings, his own thoughts, his own ways, his own spirit.
Hence Jeremiah is the only one who gives us the Book of Lamentations.
These lamentations are the outpourings of his soul to God, which approach very
much the character of the Psalms, as indeed his prophecy also does more than
any other of the prophets, either greater or lesser.
In this way,
then, Jeremiah has quite a character of his own and one of no small importance.
Practically, I think, his style is very instructive for the soul of the
believer. We shall find that we have the prophet's inward experiences recorded
as far as this could be according to the measure of the revelation that God had
made of Himself in Old Testament times.
From the very first verse we
find these features. Jeremiah was the son of Hilkiah, of the priests that were
in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin. The word of Jehovah came to him in the
days of Josiah, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. That is, he
was called to the work when God was working powerfully not only in the good
king Josiah but in a few of the Jewish people.
Now it is clear that
this partial repentance of the people was unsuited to the character of the work
entrusted to Jeremiah. His was really an inward work in the conscience. But
what brought out the expressions of his grief was that the effect of Josiah's
reformation was merely an outward one.
Hence, therefore, this
condition of the people gave occasion to the double character of Jeremiah's
prophecy. They had outward pretence and profession, great appearance of good, a
little real good underneath the surface with a great deal of outward show.
Their condition was not precisely as shown in the fig tree that came under the
Lord's curse abundance of leaf and no fruit. In Jeremiah's day, the
national state was very much what he said himself (Jer. 24). There were some
good figs, and the good figs were very good; but there were very many naughty
figs, and the naughty figs were very naughty. This moral character we shall
find, then, in this book.
PART 1: Jeremiah 1
Jeremiah 25
The word of Jehovah, as we are told in
Jeremiah 1, came unto Jeremiah, saying, "Before I formed thee in the belly I
knew thee: and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee." "I
ordained thee," it is carefully added, "a prophet unto the nations." Why unto
the nations? This special commission brings before us a peculiarity of
Jeremiah's service which we shall find abundantly verified in this book.
Although he was a Jew himself and even a priest and although the Jews in
Jerusalem have an immense place in his prophecy, the nations also are given
great prominence.
Nay, further, we shall find that when the coming
judgment of the nations is declared, Jerusalem is put among them as the very
first of the nations to be judged. If the Jews did not rise morally above the
nations from whom He had separated them, why should God continue to treat them
as His own people by a special title? If they surrendered all that was
distinctive by lapsing into Gentile idolatry, God would not support them in
such false pretensions.
Hence, when the cup of vengeance is in the
hand of the Lord (Jer. 25), to give to the nations in His judgment, the Jews
come as the first of the nations, not for blessing but for chastening and
punishment. Jeremiah, accordingly, was ordained a prophet unto the nations,
because the peculiar feature of his prophecy is that Jerusalem is given a
priority of judgment when God takes up the world to deal with its sins. This
priority is very strikingly shown in Jeremiah 25, but the same thread of truth
runs through the whole of the book from beginning to end.
This unusual
commission brings out Jeremiah's timorous spirit. "Then said Jeremiah, Ah, Lord
Jehovah! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child." Jehovah's answer is, "Say
not, I am a child." This was not at all the question but who was sending him.
If royal authority chooses a man according to its own wisdom to be its servant,
its ambassador, it is of no importance to others who the ambassador is, but
what is the power that sends him; and those that despise are not despising the
man, but despising the authority that appointed him. Jeremiah was meant to feel
that Jehovah was calling him to this office.
"Say not, I am a child: for
thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou
shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee,
saith Jehovah. Then Jehovah put forth His hand, and touched my mouth. And
Jehovah said unto me, Behold, I have put My words in thy mouth. See, I have
this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to
pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant."
The meaning of this commission is that Jeremiah was chosen to be the announcer
of the troubles and judgment that were coming upon all nations. God therefore,
as He surely would accomplish every threat that Jeremiah pronounced upon them,
speaks of the prophet as if he were pulling down and planting and building and
destroying according to the prophecies that God gave him to utter.
Now
this was an extremely painful task to Jeremiah. I think myself that of all the
prophets, greater or smaller, that were employed, there never was one to whom
it was a greater trial to pronounce judgment than to Jeremiah. He was a man of
an unusually tender spirit. He shrank from the work to which he was called for
the very reason he was called to it.
Jeremiah was, in a certain sense,
to harden himself, not as if he did not feel, but going through the depth of
the feeling of what was the import of his prophecies. He was to be the simple
vessel and channel of what God put into his lips. Hence, therefore, in this
prophet was a heart full of agony at all that he had to announce, but a mouth
that spoke boldly whatever God put into it.
Such was the character of
Jeremiah, and the first chapter shows it. Hence we find two visions together.
Jehovah says, "Jeremiah, what seest thou? And I said, I see a rod of an almond
tree. Then said Jehovah unto me, Thou hast well seen; for I will hasten My word
to perform it," alluding to the early blooming of the almond tree.
"And
the word of Jehovah came unto me the second time, saying, What seest thou? And
I said, I see a seething pot; and the face thereof is toward the north." This
is an allusion to the great northern enemy of Israel that was employed not only
to put down Judah but also to put down the nations.
Jeremiah first to
last dwells very much upon Babylon. Babylon was this northern power that is in
the mind of the Spirit of God throughout. It is not the Assyrian. The Assyrian
was northern too, but the Assyrian power was now destroyed, and it is only in
the latter day that Assyria will rise again. But meanwhile Babylon was the
great power that overshadowed the earth, and Jeremiah accordingly draws
attention to this new kingdom. "Then Jehovah said unto me, Out of the north an
evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land."
Therefore he was to gird up his loins and arise and speak unto them: "For, lo,
I will call all the families of the kingdoms of the north, saith Jehovah; and
they shall come, and they shall set every one his throne at the entering of the
gates of Jerusalem, and against all the walls thereof round about, and against
all the cities of Judah. And I will utter My judgments against them touching
all their wickedness, who have forsaken Me and have burned incense unto other
gods, and worshipped the works of their own hands. Thou therefore gird up thy
loins, and arise, and speak unto them all that I command thee: be not dismayed
at their faces, lest I confound thee before them. For, behold, I have made thee
this day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls against the
whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, against
the priests thereof, and against the people of the land. And they shall fight
against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee,
saith Jehovah, to deliver thee."
Then, as we have in Jeremiah 1, his
commission and his character shown and the visions that were given to encourage
him in going on with the work that the Lord had entrusted to him, so Jeremiah 2
shows us the state of Israel, more particularly of Jerusalem. There the Lord
rehearses what He had been to His people, and what their conduct had been,
spite of His favours.
In Jeremiah 3 He says what He is going to do for
them.
Now I need not dwell upon the bitter charges of the prophet
the double evil of the Jews by their forsaking the Lord the only source
of living waters, and their recourse to cisterns that could hold no water by
their flying to idolatry and all its corrupting influences. But, in Jeremiah 3,
we have a pleading of the Lord with them. He shows them that bad as Israel
might have been, Judah that had held out for a time and gave fair promises
under Josiah would turn out no better. The crisis would surely come; but when a
man has sunk to the lowest, God appears in His grace.
So in this very
chapter after having pressed it all upon them, he says, "Only acknowledge thine
iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against Jehovah thy God, and hast
scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree, and ye have not
obeyed My voice, saith Jehovah. Turn, O backsliding children, saith Jehovah,
for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a
family, and I will bring you to Zion: and I will give you pastors, according to
Mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. And it shall
come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land, in those days,
saith Jehovah, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of Jehovah:
neither shall it come to mind: neither shall they remember it; neither shall
they visit it; neither shall that be done any more. At that time they shall
call Jerusalem the throne of Jehovah; and all the nations shall be gathered
unto it, to the name of Jehovah, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more
after the imagination of their evil heart. In those days the house of Judah
shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the
land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your
fathers" (verses 13-18).
Now nothing can be more distinct than this
prediction, nor more gracious; for here we have clearly the intervention of
God's grace for the whole people in the latter day, after not only the Assyrian
captivity which had already taken place, but the Babylonish one which was going
to take place. After all that, God would recall His people - not part of them,
but the whole of them - would recall Israel, would recall Judah, would bring
them both back into the land, would bless them there so highly that even all
the ancient blessing that they had had, namely, the ark of the covenant, which
was the grand distinctive feature of David's faith, for which he had made a
resting- place on Zion, and which was directly lost after Solomon (for the
greater part of the nation then lost the ark, and set up golden calves). So
great would be the blessing of the latter day that even what was known under
David and Solomon would pass away; and be altogether eclipsed by the still
brighter glory of the whole united people in the latter day; and from that time
they should never depart from the Lord again.
Now it is perfectly
plain that there has not been even an approach to the accomplishment of these
national blessings. They are still entirely future. What was known after the
Babylonish captivity was the return of a mere handful of the Jews with a few
straggling Israelites. So far from that amounting to what had been known under
David and Solomon, they never had so much as an independent kingdom; they never
had even so much as was known under the most shameful of the sons of David -
the Manassehs, the Zedekiahs, the Jehoiakims, the Jehoiachins. All these
disgraceful representatives of the royal family were men of great importance,
and the state, too, had a measure of independence entirely beyond what was
known after the return from captivity.
Here, contrariwise, the prophet
speaks of a state surpassing all that had been known under their best monarchs,
and as to its being the gospel or that which we know now under Christianity,
there is not the slightest resemblance. "At that time they shall call Jerusalem
the throne of Jehovah" (Jer. 3: 17). Now that is not the gospel. The gospel is
not the throne of Jehovah. The throne of Jehovah means the governmental power,
according to His name, Jehovah, put forth over the whole earth. Jeremiah
promises this, and Zechariah (Jer.14) also shows us very distinctly the
character of that throne. There are to be no idols; no rivals: the name of
Jehovah is to be the one universal name owned and honoured over the whole
earth.
At that time, Jeremiah says, Jerusalem shall be called the
throne of Jehovah. Further, "all the nations shall be gathered unto it." What
popery has sought under the gospel, namely, to set up a universal spiritual
monarchy, will be really done under the only one that is entitled to it,
namely, the Lord Jesus. He will have this kingdom upon the earth, Jerusalem His
centre, and all the nations His sphere. At the same time, He will have the
heavens, and the new Jerusalem will be the metropolis. His will be the renewed
universe of God, that is, the heavenly city and glory above, while the earthly
Jerusalem will be the centre upon the earth.
Thus, we see that the
peculiarity of that glorious time will be not the heavens only for the soul,
nor the earth only for men in their bodies, but the heavens and earth both put
under the reign of the Lord Jesus, and Christ the acknowledged Head of all
things heavenly and earthly, the church reigning with Him in the heavens, the
Jewish people placed under Him here below.
This is what is described
here, at least, the latter part. We must have recourse to the New Testament in
order to see the former part of it, that is, the heavenly part. The earth is
always the grand subject of Old Testament prophecy, and indeed of all prophecy
in general, but the New Testament shows also the heavens as they are to be
under Christ.
Jeremiah 4 pursues the moral pleadings with the people.
"If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith Jehovah, return unto Me." And then comes
the call that God could not be satisfied with outward forms. "Circumcise
yourselves to Jehovah, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of
Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest My fury come forth like fire, and burn
that none can quench it." You observe the peculiarity. It is the Jew
particularly that comes into the scope of the prophet with regard to his moral
unfitness for the blessing of God.
So he says later on in the chapter,
"The lion is come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of the Gentiles is on
his way"; - (referring to Nebuchadnezzar) - "he is gone forth from his place to
make thy land desolate; and thy cities shall be laid waste, without an
inhabitant." "And it shall come to pass at that day, saith Jehovah, that the
heart of the king shall perish, and the heart of the princes; and the priests
shall be astonished, and the prophets shall wonder." No power will be found
anywhere because God was forsaken.
"Then said I, Ah, Lord Jehovah!
surely Thou hast greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, Ye shall
have peace; whereas the sword reacheth unto the soul." In verse 14, he appeals
to Jerusalem to repent: "O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that
thou mayest be saved. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee?" Then
later (verses 19, 20), he shows his intense grief over these troubles and
destructions that were accumulating against Jerusalem: "My bowels, my bowels! I
am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my
peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm
of war. Destruction upon destruction is cried."
So mighty are the
coming disasters that in the vision before him we are reminded of the chaotic
state of the world set out in the very beginning of Genesis. "I beheld the
earth, and lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no
light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved
lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens
were fled. I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the
cities thereof were broken down at the presence of Jehovah, and by His fierce
anger." All this was a vision of the trouble that was hanging over the Jews,
and, in fact, over the nations generally. This prophecy goes far beyond what
Nebuchadnezzar inflicted, and includes retributive judgments still future.
This subject of judgment is pursued in Jeremiah 5, while the prophet
still shows the frightful moral condition of Jerusalem, and he warns them of
the penalties about to come: "How shall I pardon thee for this? thy children
have forsaken Me, and sworn by them that are no gods: when I had fed them to
the full, they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in
the harlots' houses. They were as fed horses in the morning: every one neighed
after his neighbour's wife. Shall I not visit for these things? saith Jehovah"
(verses 7-9).
And the worst phase of the national evil was that not
merely a certain portion of the people were guilty, but "a wonderful and
horrible thing," he says, "is committed in the land; the prophets prophesy
falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and My people love to have
it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?" (verses 30, 31).
Thus
all the springs of moral rectitude were corrupted; and consequently it was
plain that nothing but judgment could come to them from the Lord.
This
subject is continued to the end of Jeremiah 6. Jeremiah calls upon the nations
to hear his message: "Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O congregation,
what is among them. Hear, O earth: behold I will bring evil upon this people,
even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto My
words, nor to My law, but rejected it. To what purpose cometh there to Me
incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country?" Their ceremonies
were vain hopes to stay the judgment. "Your burnt offerings are not acceptable,
nor your sacrifices sweet unto Me. Therefore thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will
lay stumbling-blocks before this people, and the fathers and the sons together
shall fall upon them; the neighbour and his friend shall perish." At the same
time, the prophet's heart is full of sorrow for the nation. "O daughter of my
people, gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes: make thee
mourning, as for an only son, most bitter lamentation: for the spoiler shall
suddenly come upon us" (verse 26).
In Jeremiah 7 he begins another
strain. He takes up the temple itself, and shows that the tide of evil in Judah
had completely polluted the very sanctuary of Jehovah. Moreover, in the midst
of their peril, they were trusting not in God nor in His word, but in lying
words of their own that the outward forms would be a sufficient stay against
the destroying Gentile. "Trust ye not" therefore, he says, "in lying words,
saying, The temple of Jehovah, The temple of Jehovah, The temple of Jehovah,
are these. For if ye throughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye throughly
execute judgment between a man and his neighbour; if ye oppress not the
stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this
place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt: then will I cause you to
dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and
ever" (verses 4-7).
And he shows them that their boast in an
uninterrupted succession of national privilege was a vain trust. This false
confidence was quite as strongly the notion of the Jews as it has ever been of
papists and others in Christendom. The delusion was equally destructive to them
as it will be to Christendom. There is nothing more certain to bring
destruction upon Christendom than the notion of an indefectible security.
I do not mean security for the soul, for the believer. This assurance
is quite right. We cannot too strongly hold the eternal life of the believer;
but to apply to the state of Christendom the notion that it will go on
indefectibly when God, on the contrary, has warned us in His word that
Christendom will fall just like the Jewish state before it is to be caught by
the wiles of the wicked one. Such a notion is precisely the delusion by which
Satan brings about its total departure from God.
What is perfectly
true for the soul in Christ is thoroughly ruinous for the general collective
state in religion. There is nothing finer than the faith that gives God credit
for grace to the soul; but there is no greater pit of delusion than to
predicate generally of the apostate state of things in Christendom what is only
true of and for the individual soul; because the one is real genuine faith, and
the other is most arrogant and lofty presumption, which God will judge.
Now this is precisely the moral of Jeremiah 7. And the prophet makes
his text, so to speak, to be the fact that Shiloh had lost its prestige. Shiloh
was the place where the tabernacle was originally set up in the land (verse
12). What was Shiloh now? God had profaned it: and God would do the very same
thing where the ark was now placed, where the sanctuary was in Jerusalem.
Impossible that God should bind Himself to maintain an empty form. He would no
longer sustain what was a beautiful figure of His truth, when the state of the
people and of the priests was the most offensive evil under the sun in His eye.
The greater the truth, the blessing, or at any rate the privileges, that had
been accorded to the Jewish people and their priests, the greater the
wickedness of their insults to His holiness in His own temple.
Hence,
therefore, so far from the temple being their strong fortress against the
judgments of the king of Babylon, the temple would be the main point on which
all these judgments would converge, and if the city of Jerusalem, in general,
would be destroyed by him, the sanctuary would suffer most of all. And we find
that the house of God was precisely the great object of the invader's desire;
for there was an instinctive feeling of animosity among the Gentiles against
this temple where Jehovah had placed His name. They knew right well what
Jehovah had done in times past by the overthrow of the nations. The question
was whether Jehovah would allow His temple to be plundered now, and the name of
Jehovah, as it were, to be razed from the earth.
The campaign by
Babylon against Jerusalem was a great venture. What had Jehovah not done to
Pharaoh? What had He not done to the kings who attacked the children of Israel
in the wilderness and in the land? Thus, no doubt, there was a certain tremor
and qualm in the midst of the enemies of Judah. The destruction of the ten
tribes by the Assyrian, no doubt, encouraged the king of Babylon to go forward,
but still there must have been a certain anxiety till the thing was done.
And it was precisely this vain confidence in the past that supported
the Jews. They assumed that such a thing as the conquest of Jerusalem could
never be, and that whatever might be their faults God would never allow them to
go completely down into the ditch. But this Jehovah did, and He allowed the
Gentile to triumph thoroughly over them and over His own sanctuary. But then
the very prophets that show the judgment that was coming proclaim the
deliverance and restoration that will certainly follow in due time.
Now we live in a state of things where this ultimate recovery is not believed.
The reason why men in general in Christendom do not now believe in the
restoration of Israel - there are individuals of course who believe it - but
the reason why there is general scepticism about the return and restoration of
Israel and the rebuilding of Jerusalem as a scene of glory for the Lord, is
this: there is an instinctive sense that the blessing of Israel supposes the
judgment of Christendom; for if Christendom goes on it is impossible that this
reinstatement can take place.
And this view is quite true. There
cannot be the restoration of the Jews without the complete judgment of
Christendom, because God cannot have two corporate witnesses at the same time
on the earth. And if the present witness becomes apostate then God will judge
it, and when the judgment has taken place, then He will restore His ancient
people. Such is the declared order of Scripture.
Well, naturally, those
who consider this judicial overthrow of Christendom an impeachment of their
honour, and who shrink from the unwelcome thought of the judgment of the
present state of things, are reluctant to hold that God has such a bad opinion
of what is being done in Christendom now. Consequently, they fight against this
truth to the last, and the way in which their opposition shows itself is by
denying the coming of the Lord to the earth in judgment, and consequently the
restoration of the ancient people of God.
But the New Testament is
perfectly explicit that what these prophets of old maintain is true and divine.
What the Old Testament declares, the New Testament does not weaken, but
establishes and seals. And the moral reason why the Old Testament will in due
time be verified is because the New Testament also discloses that the final
result of the gospel will be the setting up of the man of sin (2 Thess. 2).
This will be, of course, the result of the gospel abused, perverted, corrupted.
Now this conclusion of the present day of privilege is nothing at all
harsh on God's part. Many say, "What an awful end!" No doubt it is. But the
corruption of the best thing is always the worst corruption, and therefore it
is of necessity that if the corruption of the law of God ended in such a state
as God judged by the Assyrian of old and the Babylonian, sweeping both parts of
the people into captivity, the result of the corruption of the gospel in
Christendom will end in a still more fiery judgment, still more sorrowful to
contemplate.
This judicial period is what is spoken of in scripture as
the great tribulation when both Jew and Gentile must endure a retributive
dealing by God, when, finally, He will put down the pride of man both in
Judaism and Christendom and then bring in a blessing - a time of blessing when
the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters cover the
sea.
When a dispensation is diverted from its proper character because
the people of God are unfaithful to their responsibility, it is no longer a
question with them of maintaining its outward forms in their original
integrity, because they are invalidated in practice by this departure from the
truth. And with the faithful, it is a question of falling back not upon
something new but upon whatever is harmonious with the confession of the ruined
state.
We must always be in the truth of a state of things, as before
God. For instance, if I am a sinner I cannot be blessed unless I take the place
of a sinner; and, in like manner, if the outward dispensation is ruined I
cannot be fully blessed unless I recognise and feel the ruin. If I think that
everything is prosperous when God is preparing to judge, it is plain that I am
out of communion with Him, perhaps not as regards my own soul but as regards
the general state of things.
The moral difference involved is that
when things are all right and smooth at the beginning of a dispensation the
duty of a man is faithfully to throw himself into everything when everything is
good; but when things are corrupted it is his duty to separate himself from
what is corrupt and only to continue with what bears the stamp of the Spirit of
God upon it. That is the difference. You will find that in every dispensation
outward forms always fall into the hands of deceivers, because an outward form
is easily copied and easily maintained. Hence the priests and the false
prophets were the persons in Judah and Jerusalem that kept up the name of
zealousness for the law, and on this ground they claimed the allegiance of the
people.
These are the persons against whom the faithful are warned by
Jeremiah and the prophets. So, in the same way, there is no doubt at all that
supposing Christendom is to continue uninterruptedly as a religious system the
people that have the greatest claims are the Papists, and therefore if
Christendom is indefectible we ought all to be Papists. But it is plain that
the conscience and spirituality of every believer revolt against such an
appalling thought. We all feel that it is impossible that the God of truth and
grace should bind us to worship the Virgin Mary or the saints and angels and so
on.
We feel that the Papists are idolaters, and we are quite right.
They are idolaters, and they are worse idolaters than pagan idolaters, for if
it is a bad thing to worship Jupiter and Saturn it is a far worse thing to
worship the Virgin Mary. I cannot take knowledge of the Virgin Mary unless I
know that she is the mother of the Lord, and knowledge of the Virgin Mary
supposes the knowledge of Mary. Therefore I have the knowledge which ought to
guard me against worshipping the Virgin. The very fact of knowing that the
Virgin Mary was the mother of Christ ought to preserve me from Mariolatry.
Therefore, I think that, of all idolatries that have ever been under the sun,
the idolatry of the Church of Rome is the vilest.
It may be asked
whether the ruin of the church is generally known and considered. It is not,
because a great many of God's children have never fairly faced the matter. They
think when they hear of the ruin of the church, or of Christendom, that it
means somehow that God has not been faithful to His promises, whereas it is no
question at all of fidelity to promises. Fidelity to promises goes with faith
not with forms; but so far from despising forms the reason why I never could
stand the kind of thing that is common in Christendom now was that I would not
give up the forms of God's word.
For instance, take a congregation
choosing a minister. Well, I never could be a Dissenter for that reason,
because that is the invariable plan. I know there are many Dissenters who think
the same thing; Isaac Taylor who wrote The Natural History of Enthusiasm and
other books was one. He was a congregational deacon, and he wrote a book on
this subject.
Scripture provides for the choice of a person to
distribute funds. You ought to have confidence in the person who distributes
funds or you will shut up your purse, but there is no such idea in God's word
as choosing a man to preach. All the great denominations do so; not merely
Dissenters, but all sorts of sects.
The whole scheme is out of course.
It is wrong in principle. The principle is that he chooses who gives. I give
the money and I am allowed to choose a person to be the distributor of it, but
I do not give the Holy Spirit to the church, and therefore I must not choose
the minister. If God supplies gifts without asking me I am not acting in a
proper and becoming way as a Christian in choosing them among my spiritual
brothers and sisters.
I own every spiritual person as a brother and
sister, and desire grace to behave as such myself. This is perfectly plain,
but, of course, just as the relationship of spiritual brothers and sisters is
all settled by God's grace and God's will, so much more the appointment of
persons to rule or teach or preach. We are not competent to choose. No one is
competent. There never was a pretension even on the part of the apostles to do
that. The apostles did appoint elders, but it is a mistake to suppose that
elders are the same as gifts in the church. There were a great many elders who
were not gifts. An elder you cannot have now, for an elder is a direct
appointment from the Lord.
I mention this to show that for my own part
I am a decided stickler for apostolic forms, and I do not therefore at all hold
that one can set up new forms according to his own will. One of the reasons
that makes me feel the present ruined state of Christendom is that not only is
there unbelief in the authority of the word but there is also an unlawful
exercise and assumption of authority without the Lord's having warranted it.
The exercise of man's will in such matters has the deepest possible
moral influence on the Christian profession. If you have not the authority of
the Lord, you have man's will. I consider that man's will in the things of God
is nothing but sin. The whole business of the church and of the Christian is to
do the will of God upon the earth. Indeed, there is no reason for us to be on
the earth except simply to be the servants of God, and thus we are called to do
His will all our life from the time that we are redeemed by blood of Christ. We
are not, therefore, allowed by God to do one single thing out of our own heads.
I am persuaded that in himself man is incompetent to act aright, and that we
need to be guided by the word and by the power of the Spirit of God
continually.
Now where the human will is allowed, every evil thing may
be the result. When once you bring in the principle of man's will in any one
single thing - take, for instance, the choice of a minister by a congregation -
you may by the same system vote a cardinal or you may vote a pope. It all rests
on the same false principle.
There is, however, ample authority for
the present day. There is the standard, and the only one - the word of God. I
go upon the assurance that God foresaw the end from the beginning and also
every want of the Christian and of the church upon the earth, and that He
provided in His word not only for what was then wanted but for all that would
be wanted until the Lord comes to receive us up into glory. Then, having
confidence in the word of God our first business is to find out what the will
of God really is. I discover what His will was when things were right, then I
find the direction that He gives when things are wrong. I learn what is the
right state of things in what I call the wrong state of the church.
I
know that it is thought by some that God has left the mode in which the church
is to be governed an open question and that they can change the procedure
according to the country or the circumstances. I deny this policy as a first
principle, and I say it is false, and not only false, but that it results in
the most serious consequences, because the result of it is that I am not
divinely guided but I am humanly guided.
I thoroughly hold ministry to
be a divine institution, and I do not believe that the ruined state of the
church touches ministry in the smallest degree. There are persons over us in
the Lord, but the moment you touch the source of ministry, that moment you
separate ministry from the principles of the word of God. Now I believe that
both the church and ministry are divine institutions, but in order to preserve
their divine character they must be regulated by the word of God and not by
men's new inventions and shifting ideas.
I contend for the highest
antiquity: Irenæus and Justin Martyr are too low for me; that is, they
are too modern. To me, everything is modern except the apostles; that is, I
hold that genuine antiquity is what is divinely revealed. So far from thinking
that the church of God is a thing according to men or a thing to be shifted
with new fashions, I hold for the true, remote, and only divine antiquity. I
believe that is what we all ought to do, but then that is a matter for each one
to learn from God. I would not force any brother on such a point.
The
term, "the ruin of Christendom," grates on many ears. Perhaps the Lord means it
to grate. It is well to pull persons up when they are wrong. I grant that if
one could explain the term more fully that would soften what after all is just
the converse of what Jeremiah tasted. It is bitter to the taste but it is sweet
to the soul to be with God and have the certainty of doing His will.
The prophecy delivered by Jeremiah in the gate of Jehovah's house is continued
from Jeremiah 7 to the end of Jeremiah 10. In Jeremiah 8, the Lord reproaches
His people that they were more dull than the very animals and birds which are
not remarkable for their wisdom. "Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her
appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time
of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of Jehovah" (Jer. 8: 7).
The people did not know the time: they did not know His judgment; they
were going on in self-security. They thought that perhaps things were not quite
as right as they appeared to be, but were not so bad as this troublesome man,
Jeremiah, said. And so they were crying "Peace, peace," where there was no
peace. They were not even ashamed when they had committed abominations. The
prophet could only give himself up to sorrow over them. "Is there no balm in
Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter
of my people recovered? "
In his grief, Jeremiah desires (Jer. 9) that
his head should be a fountain of tears. "Oh, that my head were waters, and mine
eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the
daughter of my people!" (Jer. 11: 1)
Jeremiah felt the ruined state of
Israel. It was the complete moral ruin of the nation before the judicial ruin
came. This state is exactly where we are morally in Christendom now. It is
remarkable, but it is easier to prove the moral ruin in Christendom than when
it was in Judea. If I ask a Roman Catholic what he thinks of religious affairs,
he declares it very deplorable that there are so many systems and divisions and
that everyone does not belong to the true church. If I ask a Protestant, he
thinks that the state of the Western Church and the Greek Church is deplorable,
and, moreover, if he is a strong denominationalist he naturally does not like
the rivalry between the sects that is going on so actively; and, except an
optimist who is always fancying every time the best, and except a few persons
of a very sanguine temperament, almost everybody would allow that the general
condition of the Christian profession is very far from God, and a shattered
ideal.
But then, this prevalent condition of departure from the truth
has a very serious aspect to faith's judgment. What is the consequence? It is
not Nebuchadnezzar that is coming: it is not the Assyrian that is coming: it is
the Lord Himself that is coming. This raises, therefore, the solemn question
whether we can face the Lord about the terrible failure. If I cannot face the
Lord morally now, I ought not to be comfortable in expecting the Lord to come.
The Lord will judge what is wrong, and woe, woe, to those who are found
promoting and helping on what is wrong when He does come.
So Jeremiah
10 calls them to hear the word which Jehovah speaks unto the house of Israel.
"Thus saith Jehovah, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at
the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of
the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the
hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold;
they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They are upright
as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot
go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them
to do good. Forasmuch as there is none like unto Thee, O Jehovah; Thou art
great, and Thy name is great in might. Who would not fear Thee, O King of
nations? "
Their idols are nothing; the only one to fear is God
Himself. And here you observe that not only was the prophet Jeremiah a prophet
to the nations, but the Lord Himself is called "King of nations" - another
peculiarity of the Book of Jeremiah. The nations have their place in a broad
scale in this prophecy; and I may observe here that this is the true idea in
Revelation 15: 3. There "King of saints" ought to read "King of nations."
There is no such notion in the scripture as King of saints. The
relation that the Lord bears to saints is not King but Head, or Lord. He is
never King, except in relation to Israel or to the nations.
The phrase
in Rev. 15: 3 is a quotation from Jeremiah 10: 7. All the most ancient copies
have the true word, namely, "King of nations." I only mention this in passing.
It is more important to note as a distinction in Scotland than in England,
because there the idea that the Lord Jesus is King of the church, or King of
the saints, is exceedingly prevalent, and has been ever since the assembly of
divines at Westminster committed themselves to that error. In my opinion it is
a mistake of the most lowering character. It falsifies the present relation of
the Lord Jesus Christ to His saints.
It is not that He is not Lord
over them - that He is not their Lord. Not so. He is Lord, most surely, just
as, no doubt, Sarah was quite right in calling her husband by that term. It is
clear that the Spirit of God thinks so and records her reverence (1 Peter 3: 6)
for the consideration of others, but, nevertheless, it would have been a very
poor and miserable thing if Abraham had been nothing to her but lord. No:
Abraham was her husband, and Abraham had responsibilities towards Sarah,
instead of Sarah merely having duties towards him. It is a very meagre way of
looking at relationships if we only see one side of them, and that the side
that suits us. No: relationship always implies moral duties, and the
relationship of the Lord Jesus towards the saints is one not only of authority,
which is perfectly true, but of love, of care, of cherishing, even as a man his
own flesh.
Well now, such is not the case with a king. A king is not
bound to cherish all his subjects as his own flesh. A king is not to give a
portion to every subject in his kingdom. That would be ridiculous to expect. A
king does give a worthy portion to his own daughters and his own sons. This is
quite right and becoming, because of the family relation of the closest kind,
and so there is between Christ and the saints. If I reduce the church merely to
a nation, to a people, I make but a distant connection between them and Christ
instead of the greatest intimacy, that exists according to all the counsels of
God.
Thus in my judgment, therefore, you sap and mine the peculiar
blessedness of the Christian if you make the relationship to be one of a king
to a people instead of a head to a body. If I can look up to Christ as the
Bridegroom of my soul and of the church; if I can look at Christ as not only my
Lord but the Head from Whom every member derives nourishment, and upon Whom
there is a claim of dependence to think for it and care for it and guide and
direct it - such a view brings the greatest possible confidence in my love; and
the more simple the faith, the greater the strength that results to the soul.
Whereas if I merely make Christianity a distant relationship - that of
a people to a king, I sacrifice its choicest element. It is plain I may look
for defence against foreign foes, but I must shift for myself for the most part
in my own matters. The king does not think much about me or you and we cannot
expect him to do so. I have no personal claim of nearness to the throne, and
this distinction everybody understands. But in divine things, it has evil
results. The idea of remoteness from Christ goes well with the idea of our
being free to arrange our plans to our own liking, of our being left to arrange
our own forms of government in the church.
We come now to Jeremiah 11,
and there we find a new and very solemn warning to the men of Judah and
Jerusalem. As a rule, in all the prophets of Israel progress may be observed in
their messages; there is increasing depth in the appeals of the Spirit of God
to the people. Here, then, we have "Cursed be the man that obeyeth not the
words of this covenant, which I commanded your fathers in the day that I
brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying,
Obey My voice, and do them according to all which I command you: so shall ye be
My people, and I will be your God: that I may perform the oath which I have
sworn unto your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as it
is this day. Then answered I, and said, So be it, O Jehovah" (verses 3-5).
Their disobedience is solemnly brought home to them. "Therefore thus
saith Jehovah, Behold, I will bring evil upon them." The time has now come to
execute the curse - the curse that was pronounced in the days of Moses was
executed in the days of Nebuchadnezzar. Consequently, a vast change took place
in the relation of the people before Jehovah. They now came as distinctly under
the curse as up to that time they were simply under chastening. It was a new
thing; they had broken the covenant.
And then in Jeremiah 12, Jeremiah
says "Righteous art thou, O Jehovah, when I plead with Thee: yet let me talk
with Thee of Thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper?
wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously? Thou hast planted
them, yea, they have taken root: they grow, yea, they bring forth fruit: Thou
art near in their mouth, and far from their reins. But Thou, O Jehovah, knowest
me: Thou hast seen me, and tried mine heart toward Thee: pull them out like
sheep for the slaughter, and prepare them for the day of slaughter. How long
shall the land mourn, and the herbs of every field wither, for the wickedness
of them that dwell therein? the beasts are consumed and the birds; because they
said, He shall not see our last end.
"If thou hast run with the
footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with the
horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee,
then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan? For even thy brethren, and the
house of thy father, even they have dealt treacherously with thee; yea, they
have called a multitude after thee: believe them not, though they speak fair
words unto thee. I have forsaken Mine house, I have left Mine heritage; I have
given the dearly beloved of My soul into the hand of her enemies. Mine heritage
is unto Me as a lion in the forest; it crieth out against Me: therefore have I
hated it. Mine heritage is unto Me as a speckled bird, the birds round about
are against her; come ye, assemble all the beasts of the field, come to devour.
Many pastors have destroyed My vineyard, they have trodden My portion under
foot, they have made My pleasant portion a desolate wilderness, They have made
it desolate, and being desolate it mourneth unto Me; the whole land is made
desolate, because no man layeth it to heart.
"The spoilers are come
upon all high places through the wilderness: for the sword of Jehovah shall
devour from the one end of the land even to the other end of the land: no flesh
shall have peace. They have sown wheat, but shall reap thorns: they have put
themselves to pain, but shall not profit: and they shall be ashamed of your
revenues because of the fierce anger of Jehovah. Thus saith Jehovah against all
Mine evil neighbours, that touch the inheritance which I have caused My people
Israel to inherit, Behold I will pluck them out of their land, and pluck out
the house of Judah from among them. And it shall come to pass, after that I
have plucked them out I will return, and have compassion on them, and will
bring them again, every man to his heritage, and every man to his land."
Having said that Judah would come under this judgment of Jehovah, in
Jeremiah 13 symbolic action is introduced; that is, a sign to show what is
coming. "Go and get thee a linen girdle, and put it upon thy loins, and put it
not in water. So I got a girdle according to the word of the Lord, and put it
on my loins. And the word of Jehovah came unto me the second time saying, Take
the girdle that thou hast got, which is upon thy loins, and arise, go to
Euphrates, and hide it there in a hole of the rock. So I went, and hid it by
Euphrates, as Jehovah commanded me. And it came to pass after many days, that
Jehovah said unto me, Arise, go to Euphrates, and take the girdle from thence
which I commanded thee to hide there. Then I went to Euphrates, and digged, and
took the girdle from the place where I had hid it: and, behold, the girdle was
marred, it was profitable for nothing" (verses 1 -7).
And the word of
Jehovah then explains this sign. "Thus saith Jehovah, after this manner will I
mar the pride of Judah, and the great pride of Jerusalem. This evil people
which refuse to hear My words, which walk in the imagination of their heart,
and walk after other gods to serve them, and to worship them, shall even be as
this girdle, which is good for nothing. For as the girdle cleaveth to the loins
of a man, so have I caused to cleave unto Me the whole house of Israel and the
whole house of Judah, saith Jehovah; that they might be unto Me for a people,
and for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory: but they would not hear.
Therefore thou shalt speak unto them this word; Thus saith Jehovah God of
Israel, Every bottle shall be filled with wine: and they shall say unto thee Do
we not certainly know that every bottle shall be filled with wine? "
So now the people are bidden to heed the warning. "Hear ye, and give ear; be
not proud: for Jehovah hath spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God, before He
cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and while
ye look for light, He turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross
darkness. But if ye will not hear it my soul shall weep in secret places for
your pride; and mine eye shall weep sore, and run down with tears, because
Jehovah's flock is carried away captive. Say unto the king and unto the queen,
Humble yourselves, sit down: for your principalities shall come down, even the
crown of your glory. The cities of the south shall be shut up, and none shall
open them: Judah shall be carried away captive all of it, it shall be wholly
carried away captive. Lift up your eyes, and behold them that come from the
north: where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock? What wilt
thou say when he shall punish thee? for thou hast taught them to be captains,
and as chief over thee: shall not sorrows take thee, as a woman in travail?"
Thus, in striking language it is made known that woe is coming upon Jerusalem
to the full.
In Jeremiah 14, there is the positive infliction of a
dearth, causing death and destruction, as a mark of God's displeasure. "Judah
mourneth, and the gates thereof languish; they are black unto the ground; and
the cry of Jerusalem is gone up." Their nobles are all in sorrow, but above all
the prophets were wicked (verses 14, 15). Those who ought to have been the best
in Israel were really the worst. God's displeasure was most strongly expressed
against the false prophets.
This condemnation of the people is so
strong that in Jeremiah 15. the Lord declares that the state of things now in
Jerusalem and in Judah was such that even if the best men that had ever lived
and those most known for their prayers of intercession were to appear in the
land, they could not alter His fixed determination to judge the land. "Though,"
says He, "Moses and Samuel stood before Me, yet My mind could not be toward
this people: cast them out of My sight and let them go forth" (Jer. 15: 1).
And what then was the righteous to do? What could the righteous man
seek? We find the answer given by Jeremiah himself: "Thy words," says he, "were
found and I did eat them; and Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of
mine heart; for I am called by Thy name, O Jehovah God of hosts" (Jer. 15: 16).
This was his resource, and that of all the faithful in a day of apostasy.
The words of the Lord always become more precious to the pious heart
in a day of ruin when judgment is about to fall. So the apostle Paul when
warning the elders of Ephesus pointed out this resource. "Now," says he, "I
commend you to God and the word of His grace" (Acts 20: 32). Seducers, wolves,
and perverse men, all these he anticipates will be spoilers among the flock,
but his counsel is, "I commend you to God and the word of His grace." So in
Timothy where Paul speaks of the last days and of perilous times coming, he
says, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God," conveying particularly
this value for the Old Testament Scriptures. "All scripture" includes the New
Testament as well as the Old.
Then again Peter points to the same
feature of God's word. Peter was about to depart; he had this intimation from
the Lord. He was soon to let slip the earthly tabernacle. In view of his
absence as an apostle, he reminded them to keep in remembrance the words of
truth they had heard (2 Peter 1). The word of God is always to be the
distinguishing mark, and the anchor of hope for the believer in God.
I
remember that the famous Bishop Horsley some years ago made some good remarks
about this very thing. He had a strong sense of the ruin of Christendom that
was at hand, and he ventured to think that when the things God wrought amongst
His people came completely into the hands of men without His fear, God would
awaken in the hearts of His people such a sense of the value of His word as
would bring them to a degree of intelligence unknown in the previous state of
the church.
This conviction is a remarkable statement of what, I
believe, has always been true in the dealings of God. It was so in the days of
our Lord. Destruction was impending over Jerusalem then, and the Annas and the
Simeons and those who looked for redemption and the destruction of Jerusalem
were those persons that Malachi prepares us for in the last words of his book:
"Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another," and the Lord holds
them in special remembrance. And I have no doubt that in like manner the Lord
does and will do for those who value His word until judgment falls upon
Christendom.
In verse 19, this love of God's words is followed up:
"Therefore thus saith Jehovah, If thou return, then will I bring thee again,
and thou shalt stand before Me, and if thou take forth the precious from the
vile thou shalt be as My mouth." The great concern of believers in an evil day
is not to be meddling with the vile but to be seeking to do good to the
precious.
The gospel seeks the vile because it is God's way of making
the vile to be precious. But, the people of God are not to occupy ourselves
with what is bad, except to reject it. They are to seek what is good, to
proclaim it. This is precisely what is pressed upon Jeremiah: "If thou take
forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as My mouth." That is, you will
be enabled to utter My truth and My grace. You will be the vessel of My mind,
which the mouth is. "Let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them";
that is, do not meddle with them, but if you love My mind, My words, My truth,
you will be made a blessing to them.
The great point is the selection
of the precious from the vile.
"And I will make thee unto this people a
fenced brazen wall: and they shall fight against thee but they shall not
prevail against thee: for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee." The
unfailing protection of God is with His testimony as long as He sends one, and
He Himself is with His witnesses.
So in Jeremiah 16, the coming woe is
pronounced, still more distressingly. It is not only dearth now, but death, and
the word to Jeremiah is: "Enter not into the house of mourning, neither go to
lament nor bemoan them." The time would not permit of it. When deaths are few
there may be time to mourn with one and another, but when death is in every
house it is too late.
"Enter not into the house of mourning, neither
go to lament nor bemoan them: for I have taken away My peace from this people,
saith Jehovah, even loving-kindness and mercies. Both the great and the small
shall die in this land: they shall not be buried," so numerous would they be,
"neither shall men lament for them, nor cut themselves, nor make themselves
bald for them: neither shall men break bread for them" (verses 5-7) It is "tear
themselves" in the text, but it seems to me to be what is actually said in the
margin, "break bread."
This practice of breaking bread in connection
with death seems to be the origin of what the Lord Jesus consecrated into the
grand memorial of His remembrance. "Neither shall men break bread for them in
mourning, to comfort them for the dead; neither shall men give them the cup of
consolation." There you have the Supper, in both its parts. It was a familiar
custom among the Jews, but the Lord gave a unique significance to it, and
stamped new truth upon it. It was connected with the passover, for, as we know,
that was the time of its institution. There was a particular reason for its
establishment at that and at no other time, because it was to mark the
impressive change from the great central and fundamental feast of Israel. A new
and different feast was begun for the Christians.
Then, in this
chapter (Jer. 16: 14, 15), a promise of future restoration is given. "Behold,
the days come, saith Jehovah, that it shall no more be said, Jehovah liveth,
that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; but, Jehovah
liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and
from all the lands whither He had driven them: and I will bring them again into
their land that I gave unto their fathers." Thus, the same chapter that brings
in such a solemn denunciation of judgment gives the pledge of their final
deliverance, for this will take place after the Babylonish captivity, Babylon
being "the land of the north" spoken of here.
In Jeremiah 17 the
prophet says that it was not only Israel's sin but Judah's, that was so
tremendous. Moreover, their danger was in trusting in man and the arm of flesh
(verse 5). When the state of things becomes thoroughly evil and corrupt, the
only object of trust is God. We must look to Him, and such is the blessing of
the Lord that if we only confide in Him no day is so dark but what God can give
us the richest blessings and the light of His presence. This subject is pursued
in a very striking manner in the context.
In Jeremiah 18 we have the
potter's house brought before us as a prophetic sign. The house of Israel was,
of course, the clay to be moulded by the potter; "as the clay is in the
potter's hand, so are ye in Mine hand, O house of Israel." So the Lord shows
the desperate case of this people, with whom He had taken such trouble. The
effect of sending His precious words to them was their anger and hatred of His
servant. Jeremiah was the great object of their animosity. "Then said they,
Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish
from the priest nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet." They
were extremely jealous of him as an intruder. "Come, and let us smite him with
the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words."
In Jeremiah
19 we have the sign of the potter's earthen vessel further developed. Now the
valley of the son of Hinnom is brought forward, which is always significant of
judgment. "Therefore, behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that this place
shall no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but The
valley of slaughter." Tophet indicates the great judgment which the Lord will
execute when He Himself comes. It is not merely the place of execution by man.
Plainly, the judgment of Jerusalem is the topic.
Then we have an
historical passage (Jer. 19: 14 - Jer. 20: 18), dealing with the persecution of
the prophet by the priests. Now Pashur, the son of Immer the priest, was
extremely vexed, and he used personal violence towards the prophet. Jeremiah
tells him that his name should be called Magor-missabib, that is, Fear round
about. This man who was so bold against Jeremiah would soon be humbled and
filled with fear because of what was about to come to pass upon him. This
attack by Pashur leads Jeremiah to an unfolding of his deep inward feeling. His
language is very beautiful to my mind. There was no kind of steeling his heart
against the persecution. His mouth was like one of steel, no doubt, but his
heart was very soft indeed, and experienced deep agony on account of what he
was obliged to utter against his adversary. So the very man that seemed as if
nothing could bend him in truth was bound in the greatest grief before God, and
at last he vents it to the Lord. "Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not
the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought
tidings to my father, saying, A man child is born unto thee; making him very
glad."
Jeremiah, however, is in wonderful contrast with the blessed
Lord, Who, when most rejected, was most happy in a certain sense. The reason
was that He sought not His own things, but, as He said in Spirit, "The
reproaches of them that reproached Thee are fallen upon Me." He was here simply
to magnify God. If the greatest suffering would magnify God the most, He was
ready to receive it. He could not pray for what was worst of all; He could not
desire that God should forsake Him. Such a plea was impossible. It would show
real hardness, and not perfection; but the Lord Jesus was perfect in
everything, and in every way.
Jeremiah's prophecy was continued. In
Jeremiah 21 the denunciation of Jehovah is directed particularly against the
royal house of David. The sin of Zedekiah was still more serious. The guilt of
the people and the priests and prophets has already been exposed, but now the
responsible head of the nation is condemned. There was no exception; the ruin
of Judah is complete.
Royalty was always the last stem of blessing in
the history of Israel. If only the king had been right, though the people and
the prophets were ever so wrong, God would still send blessing to Israel.
Everything depended upon the king, the seed of David. God might have chastised
the prophets and priests and people, but He would have held to them for His
servant David's sake. But when not only they went astray but the king himself
was the leader of the wickedness, it was utterly impossible to hold to them,
and it was the sorrowful task of Jeremiah to pronounce this divine decision.
This responsibility resting on Zedekiah's shoulders gives its true importance
to what he says: "Touching the house of the king of Judah, say, Hear ye the
word of Jehovah; O house of David, thus saith the Lord; Execute judgment in the
morning, and deliver him that is spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, lest
My fury go out like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil
of your doings" (Jer. 21: 11, 12).
In Jeremiah 22 the sin of the
representatives of the house of David is dwelt upon in further detail. Beside
Zedekiah, Shallum (Jehoahaz), the son of Josiah (verse 11), Jehoiakim, also son
of Josiah (verse 18), and Coniah (Jehoiachin, son of Jehoiakim, verse 24) are
all arraigned as evil rulers in the critical times when the monarchy was
drawing to its close.
The kings named are out of their chronological
order, but the purpose is to bring the separate prophecies against the separate
kings of Judah all into a cluster for the moral object of showing that
virtually there was no difference. Some might be a little more pronounced in
their violence and gross iniquity, but they were all faithless and godless.
Hence, the solemn sentence was uttered by Jehovah: "O earth, earth, earth, hear
the word of Jehovah. Thus saith Jehovah, Write ye this man childless, a man
that shall not prosper in his days; for no man of his seed shall prosper,
sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah." It is implied,
not that the line of David should fail, but that this man's line should.
Jeremiah 23 pronounces a woe upon the pastors in general. By the
pastors, the prophet means the kings who ought to have provided protection and
provender for the people. But they scattered and destroyed the sheep of
Jehovah's flock. However, He would raise up a competent Ruler and Shepherd-King
for His sheep. "Behold the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will raise unto
David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute
judgment and justice in the earth. In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel
shall dwell safely: and this is His name whereby He shall be called, JEHOVAH
OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS" (Jer. 23: 5, 6).
It is plain this prophecy points
to the Messiah, the Lord Jesus. But the Messiah is the Lord Jesus not so much
in relation to us as to Israel. This is important to hold fast. We do not lose
by doing so. Many persons have the idea that if these prophecies are not
applied to Christians and the church we lose something. Honesty is always the
best policy. You cannot take something from your neighbour without losing far
more than your neighbour loses. No doubt he may have a little loss, but you
will have a terrible one. As this is true in natural things so much the more is
it true in spiritual things. You cannot defraud Israel of one fraction of their
portion, without impoverishing yourself immensely.
It must be
remembered that the character and kind of blessing that Israel will have is of
another sort from ours. This difference is due to the Lord Himself. The Lord
Jesus will be the Head of the heavens as well as of the earth, and while it is
a very precious thing to be blessed on the earth, it is better to be blessed in
the heavens. And there is just this distinction made between a Jew and a
Christian. The Jew's proper blessing is upon the earth under Christ. The
Christian's proper blessing is in the heavens along with Christ. "Blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ Who hath blessed us" - not them -
"blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus"
(Eph. 1: 3).
Hence, the effect of Christian people appropriating the
blessings of Israel as the blessings of Christians is that they lose sight of
their own distinctive heavenly blessing and lapse more or less into the mere
measure of a Jew's blessing. I grant you that if a person takes up the broad
principle of the thing it is all quite right but to do this without
overstepping the mark requires both care and discrimination. Unfortunately, the
persons who confuse the Christian with the Jew have neither care nor
discrimination. Consequently, the common interpretation I might truly
characterise as a jumble of Scriptural doctrines, by which all real power of
truth is lost.
The whole force of truth upon conscience and conduct
depends upon its distinctness. When you blunt the edge of the truth, when you
make the sharp two-edged sword to have no edge at all, it seems to me that its
proper value for the soul is wellnigh gone. Now this destruction of value has
been the effect of mixing up Jewish and Christian things. The fact is God made
the distinction between the two very plain. He has written one set of truths in
one language and the other in another language. The Holy Spirit wrote not
merely the Old Testament in Hebrew but the New in Greek. For man to make both
revelations mean the same thing is an error of the first magnitude.
If
you say both Testaments are divinely inspired, I agree with you, and rejoice in
the belief; and I hope you will always hold fast this truth. Indeed you can
never be too tenacious in holding fast the inspiration of every word of
Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, always making allowance for errors of
copyists. I am no enemy to research in these particulars. I grant you there are
a few words here and there that have been interpolated by the carelessness of
scribes; but they are very few and they are all well known. They do not affect
the divine accuracy and authority of Scripture, both Old and New.
Each
of the two volumes has its own special point of view. The Old Testament looks
on man in the flesh - the Jew and the Gentile. The New Testament looks at those
who are called out from the Jew and Gentile - the church of God. Those
composing the church fill the gap between the ancient recognition of the
Jews-and the future recognition of the Jews. We steal in, as it were, between
the two periods - the past and the future - on the drawbridge which is made
ready to receive us. We are just simply passing through, leaving the earth to
go into the heavens for ever. This is our proper place according to divine
calling.
Our distinctive Christian hope is that we shall not only be
reigned over by Christ but that we shall reign along with Him. Therefore to
take up such prophetic words as these, "I will raise unto David a righteous
Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and
justice in the earth" (Jer. 23: 5), and to apply them to the church is to lower
the status of the church from heaven to earth. It ought to be a solemn warning
to souls of the danger of their interpretation inasmuch as supremacy in the
earth forms a very prominent feature of the false pretensions of Popery.
Catholic expositors have been leaders in this false interpretation.
They have been misled by some of the ancient fathers who assumed that these Old
Testament prophecies referred to Christianity. Consequently, Popery has sought
to make the church a governor among the nations, to make the Pope a King of
kings, and to put all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues under the rule
of the see of Rome. Worldly government has been their avowed object, and in
support of this claim they apply all these promises about Israel to themselves.
But the Lord will judge these outrageous falsehoods and pretensions.
Moreover, He will reserve the earth for the Jewish people at the same time that
Popery, the New Testament Babylon, will be destroyed by the divine judgment. We
have to take care, therefore, not to be drawn astray in interpretation, because
if we take a wrong path we do not know to what confusion and error we may be
led.
"In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell
safely." Now to attempt to apply this passage to what people call spiritual
things is preposterous, because Judah and Israel are all the same thing if you
take them in a spiritual sense. At any rate, I should like to hear a man define
the difference. Perhaps the Tractarian party could define it. They think that
Judah is the High Church and that Israel is the Low Church and Dissenters.
"And this is His name whereby He shall be called, JEHOVAH OUR
RIGHTEOUSNESS. Therefore behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that they shall
no more say, Jehovah liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the
land of Egypt; but, Jehovah liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of
the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I
had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land." Plainly enough, the
passage speaks of the deliverance of the whole earthly people, both the ten
tribes and the two tribes, and of nothing else. We may take the principle of
the promised restoration of Israel to show how good the Lord is towards us, but
nothing more. The truth is that we have never been driven out of our heritage,
as Israel was. We may have failed to appropriate God's gifts, we may have
abandoned our proper blessings, but there never has been such a thing as God
driving Christians out of their proper place in Christ Jesus.
The
whole idea of spiritualising the prophecies is unsound in principle. You can
never apply it in detail. The theory only lives in a mist. So long as you are
in the spiritual fog, you imagine these passages can be taken in a vague sense,
but the moment you observe the precision of the word of God this delusion is at
an end.
In the latter part of this chapter (Jer. 23) the value of the
word of Jehovah is again insisted upon very strongly, and in an interesting
way. The false prophets, the profane priests, and all the other dreamers
brought forward their words to deceive, but the Lord stands to His own
utterances, and how? Why should they take heed to it? Upon what ground? Upon
its own intrinsic power. "What is the chaff to the wheat?" (verse 28).
Nutritive value decides.
I never read a tradition that was not
manifestly chaff. I never read a thought that was of man that was not worthless
in the things of God. Give me something of God, and the moment my faith lays
hold upon the mind of God I have got the wheat. In other words, the truth of
God is not a mere question of historical investigation, but it is what suits a
plain man much better and straightway. What would become of the poor and the
simple if they had to conduct all kinds of long investigations to find out what
the word of God was?
There is one capital way of meeting a man when he
is hungry. Give him a piece of bread, and he knows right well it is bread. He
may never have seen that kind of bread before, and may never have tasted it,
but he is convinced it is bread. Give him a piece of board, and he knows this
is not bread. Thus, judged by human learning, a man may be exceedingly
ignorant, but there is a sort of practical test by which God guards even the
simplest of His people. "What is chaff to the wheat?" The truth of God always
commends itself to the consciences of those that hear it.
The hearers
may be bitterly prejudiced. They may have their difficulties, but then those
difficulties arise entirely from the strength of their will that blindly
cleaves to the thing to which it has been accustomed; for no man having drunk
old wine straightway desireth new, for he saith the old is better. He is grown
used to what he has heard from his childhood, so that even though the Lord
Jesus presents the new wine, the force of old habits and prejudice is
considerable. Nevertheless man has a conscience, and that which is of God, and
which reveals Christ to his soul, always finds an answer in the heart, even
though the strength of will may still lead a man unbelievingly to slight God's
word, to refuse it, and even resist it.
The state of the Jewish nation
is portrayed in Jeremiah 24. by the two baskets of figs to which I have already
referred. I need not say much about them, except to note one remark about the
good figs (verse 5). "Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Like these good
figs, so will I acknowledge them that are carried away captive of Judah, whom I
have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans for their good."
Jehovah meant their exile to be for their eventual good. This is a
very important point. In a day of ruin faith always recognises the chastening
of God and bows to it. Unbelief always resists, and accounts it patriotism or
perhaps religion to oppose. Jeremiah seemed to be in the eyes of the men of
Judah a very false Jew for this reason. He always counselled them to submit to
the king of Babylon. They accounted themselves much better Jews, because they
were willing to fight against the king of Babylon.
But the question
was, What had God said? God told His prophet Jeremiah that the only path of
safety and the only path of honouring Him was to submit to the king of Babylon.
The king of Babylon might be very wicked, but God's people were also wicked,
and it was as a judgment of their evil that God gave them into the hands of the
king of Babylon.
Now faith always bows to God's will. If faith tells
me to resist, I resist. If faith tells me to yield, I am bound to do it.
Jeremiah did not resist, but yielded. The naughty figs resisted, and rather
than yield, they fell back upon Egypt to try and balance by political power and
military aid the strength of the king of Babylon. The Lord tells them that the
good figs were those that had submitted, and in the days of Jeconiah had been
carried away captive to Babylon.
"And as the evil figs, which cannot
be eaten, they are so evil; surely thus saith Jehovah, So will I give Zedekiah
the king of Judah, and his princes, and the residue of Jerusalem, that remain
in this land, and them that dwell in the land of Egypt: and I will deliver them
to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt, to be a
reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places whither I shall
drive them. And I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, among
them, till they be consumed from off the land that I gave unto them and to
their fathers" (Jer. 24: 8-10). This was the different fate that awaited those
who remained until the days of Zedekiah.
Jeremiah 25 is the proper
centre of the prophecies of Jeremiah, and therefore the natural place for a
break in this very cursory sketch of this prophecy. "The word that came to
Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim,
the son of Josiah, the king of Judah, that was the first year of the king of
Babylon" (Jer. 25: 1).
Here Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, is
brought in, the great oppressor of the Jews of whom the Lord had warned. He had
told His people what was coming if they did not repent, and they had not
repented. Now He announces, "I will send and take all the families of the
north, saith Jehovah, and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant"
(verse 9).
The last is a remarkable word. It was no longer Zedekiah,
My servant, but it was Nebuchadnezzar, My servant. The children of Israel and
of Judah were about to lose their special place as His nation, too. It was now
a question, not of being His servant, as a special honour, but merely in
providence. Nebuchadnezzar, the idolatrous Gentile, could be His servant in
this way as much as any other.
Jehovah recites in detail His sentence
upon Jerusalem and other nations also. So He says, "Moreover, I will take from
them the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the
bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the
light of the candle. And this whole land shall be a desolation and an
astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will
punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith Jehovah, for their iniquity,
and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations. And I
will bring upon that land all My words which I have pronounced against it, even
all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah hath prophesied against all
the nations. For many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of them
also: and I will recompense them according to their deeds, and according to the
works of their own hands. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel unto me; Take
the wine cup of this fury at My hand, and cause all the nations to whom I send
thee to drink it." Jeremiah is still regarded as Jehovah's prophet to the
nations. "And they shall drink, and be moved, and be mad, because of the sword
that I will send among them. Then took I the cup at Jehovah's hand, and made
all the nations to drink, unto whom Jehovah had sent me." But who must receive
the cup first? "To wit, Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah, and the kings
thereof, and the princes thereof, to make them a desolation, an astonishment,
an hissing and a curse" (verses 10-18).
It is only now that the sons
of Israel are included with the nations. They had, as a people, forfeited their
separate place unto God. They had lost it morally, and now they lost it
judicially. God never judges persons until their own consciences have first
judged them. The Lord did not drive the first man out of Paradise until the man
fled from His presence. Adam fled to hide himself from God, and God only
sentenced him afterwards to what his own conscience had already sentenced him.
The same thing is always true of every soul.
Now when divine judgment
is coming upon the nations around Palestine, among the very first of the
nations to be judged come Jerusalem and Judah. They all are corrupt, thoroughly
corrupt. It is idle to seek for differences of guilt among them. In fact, the
special privileges of Judah only result in Judah coming first into the
judgment. Jerusalem is judged at the beginning of the seventy years and Babylon
is judged at the end of the period. The difference is only one of time; all are
judged eventually.
The chapter speaks in such wide and general terms
that although these prophecies were in a measure accomplished when
Nebuchadnezzar was judged, God has in full view the end of the age - the great
time when all prophecy shall be accomplished.
PART 2: Jeremiah 26 - Jeremiah 52
The second division of
Jeremiah begins with Jeremiah 26, and is distinguished by its taking up special
circumstances rather than the general proof of the iniquity of the Jews and of
the nations which brought them all into a state of subjugation to
Nebuchadnezzar.
In what follows, we find the moral ground in details.
"In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah
came this word from Jehovah, saying, Thus saith Jehovah." Josiah was the one in
whose reign the reformation which we have noticed before took place. The reform
awakened a transient hope in pious minds of a permanent change Godward in the
people, but this was a delusive hope. Indeed, we are never to entertain such
hopes.
Once declension has set in, there may be temporary recovery and
blessing, and there may even be deepening blessing as evil deepens. The light
vouchsafed of God to faithful individuals may become more and more bright, as
lights in a dark place. But once evil pervades the mass of those who bear the
name of the Lord, it only corrupts as a leaven more and more. Man cannot stay
its progress, and God Himself does not take away the leaven. God permits the
evil to develop in intensity and presumption in order that His judgment may
become necessary, and felt to be so by those who have the secret of the Lord.
When the hearts of the pious are bowed under the prevailing evil, they
are led like Jeremiah into the greater desire for their own souls and for their
own separateness from evil, and, on the other hand, they cry to God much more
earnestly for their nation than if things went on with outward fairness and
decorum. Thus, a double good is effected. The sons of God learn to hate evil
with a deep and holy hatred, and, on the other hand, they distrust themselves
and look away from the earth to the Lord for help and deliverance. These two
effects especially are wrought in the soul by the Spirit of God in a day of
evil.
The great crisis in the national history brought before us is in
the days of Jehoiakim, and it could not have occurred sooner. Under Josiah,
there was an outward restraint of evil. The piety of the king affected the
nation and brought a blessing upon it from God, but when his son Jehoiakim was
on the throne, there was no moral ground found among the people for the favour
of God.
Hence, "Thus saith Jehovah; Stand in the court of Jehovah's
house, and speak unto all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in
Jehovah's house, all the words that I command thee to speak unto them; diminish
not a word: if so be they will hearken, and turn every man from his evil way,
that I may repent Me of the evil, which I purpose to do unto them because of
the evil of their doings" (Jer. 26: 2, 3).
This is a fresh commission
in a modified sense given to the prophet. Jeremiah had, as we saw in Jeremiah
1, already received his great call. Now, in the beginning of the second
division of the Book, he again addressed the people, and admonished them
against diminishing a single word of what God had to say by him.
"Thou
shalt say unto them, Thus saith Jehovah; If ye will not hearken to Me, to walk
in My law, which I have set before you, to hearken to the words of My servants
the prophets, whom I sent unto you, both rising up early, and sending them, but
ye have not hearkened; then will I make this house like Shiloh, and will make
this city a curse to all the nations of the earth. So the priests and the
prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of
Jehovah" (verses 4-7).
We find after this warning a division occurred
among the people. Some heeded the words of Jeremiah and defended him (verses
17-24); others hardened themselves against him and sought his life, the priests
being the most violent. "Now it came to pass, when Jeremiah had made an end of
speaking all that Jehovah had commanded him to speak unto all the people, that
the priests and the prophets and all the people took him, saying, Thou shalt
surely die" (verse 8).
They were indignant that the prophet should
pronounce ruin upon the holy temple of Jehovah. It seemed to them as if his
warnings of judgment were an impeachment of Jehovah's blessing upon the nation
and of His choice of Israel to be His people. Did not his words prove that
Jeremiah had less confidence and less faith in Jehovah than they?
"When the princes of Judah heard these things, then they came up from the
king's house unto the house of Jehovah, and sat down in the entry of the new
gate of Jehovah's house. Then spake the priests and the prophets unto the
princes, and to all the people, saying, This man is worthy to die" (verses 10,
11). The princes of Judah showed more conscience than the people or the priests
or the prophets. The priests influenced the people, as is habitually the case,
and the princes, being men of more independence of mind and less influenced by
the feelings of the masses, were to some extent impressed by the weight and
solemnity of the prophet's warnings.
So Jeremiah speaks to all the
princes and to all the people. He does not now remonstrate with the priests and
the prophets; they were thoroughly hardened and sold to evil; but he does
appeal to the princes on the one hand and to the people on the other, who,
after all, were simple. And he says, "Jehovah sent me to prophesy against this
house." He did not prophesy out of personal feeling. He was not prompted by
private animosity. Surely they did not think that Jeremiah would take pleasure
in the destruction of his own city and the sanctuary of Jehovah.
"Therefore now amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of Jehovah
your God; and Jehovah will repent Him of the evil that He hath pronounced
against you." Jeremiah's prophecies are more conditional than any other, save
only that of Jonah. Indeed, they are more conditionally expressed than even
Jonah's. Jonah did not put forward a condition; "If you repent, God will spare
Nineveh." But Jeremiah does state the condition; "If you repent, Jehovah will
repent of what He means to do."
But the reason why Jeremiah's
prophecies are more conditional is that, more than any of the other prophets,
he alludes to the impending judgment of Israel and the nations by
Nebuchadnezzar. And as this judgment was but a temporal one, a condition is
attached to the prophecy. When the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and the
judgment that He will execute form the prominent topic before the mind of the
Holy Ghost, no conditions of repentance are expressed. There God has distinctly
before Him the consummation of the frightful apostasy of man - of the Jews, of
the Gentiles, and, we can now add, of Christendom. Therefore inasmuch as the
measure of the wickedness to be judged is certain, so the coming of the Lord to
judge that wickedness is also certain. It is a fixed event, and so far as I
know, this coming in judgment is never stated conditionally. There is no
warning, such as, "If you repent, the Lord will not come." It would in fact be
a kind of dishonour to the Lord Jesus.
But as only an earthly
instrument was to be employed in this case to inflict the judgments, we can
well understand the Lord saying, "If you repent, I will not send this
Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to beat you down." This is the reason, as it appears
to me, why this feature appears more in Jeremiah than elsewhere. Moreover,
while it is entirely wrong to apply Jeremiah's prophecies exclusively to the
days of Nebuchadnezzar, it remains true that the historical Nebuchadnezzar is
more prominent in this Book than anywhere else in scripture.
"Then
said the princes and all the people unto the priests and to the prophets; This
man is not worthy to die; for he hath spoken to us in the name of Jehovah our
God. Then rose up certain of the elders of the land, and spake to all the
assembly of the people, saying, Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of
Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus
saith Jehovah of hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall
become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest"
(verses 16-18). What happened to Micah? Did they treat him as a traitor? Was
Micah judged to die? Not so.
Now this instance from Hezekiah's reign
was the more striking and emphatic because Micah (Jer. 3: 12) had prophesied of
the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple in the days of a good king.
Surely, therefore, his prophecy was more surprising than Jeremiah's prediction
of the same thing in the days of a bad king. The defence, therefore, of the
prophet was complete. "Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him at all
to death? did he not fear Jehovah, and besought Jehovah, and Jehovah repented
Him of the evil which He had pronounced against them? Thus might we procure
great evil against our souls" (verse 19).
Then the case of Micah was
followed by another. Urijah, the son of Shemaiah of Kirjath-jearim, who in the
name of Jehovah, prophesied against the city of Jerusalem and the land of
Judah. "And when Jehoiakim the king, with all his mighty men, and all the
princes, heard his words, the king sought to put him to death: but when Urijah
heard it, he was afraid, and fled, and went into Egypt; and Jehoiakim the king
sent men into Egypt, namely, Elnathan the son of Achbor, and certain men with
him into Egypt. And they fetched forth Urijah out of Egypt, and brought him
unto Jehoiakim the king who slew him with the sword, and cast his dead body
into the graves of the common people. Nevertheless, the hand of Ahikam the son
of Shaphan was with Jeremiah that they should not give him into the hand of the
people to put him to death" (verses 21-24). Thus, while there was the greatest
danger that Jeremiah would suffer martyrdom as Urijah had done, the Lord
watched over him. It was an honour to Urijah to die, but it was a mercy to
Judah that Jeremiah was not put to death.
Jeremiah 27 opens thus: "In
the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah came
this word unto Jeremiah from Jehovah, saying, Thus saith Jehovah to me; Make
thee bonds and yokes, and put them upon thy neck, and send them to the king of
Edom, and to the king of Moab, and to the king of the Ammonites, and to the
king of Tyrus, and to the king of Zidon, by the hand of the messengers which
come to Jerusalem unto Zedekiah king of Judah; and command them to say unto
their masters, Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel" (verses 1 to 4).
This instruction came to Jeremiah in the days of Zedekiah, as verse 3
states. Jehoiakim, in the first verse, has no doubt been mistakenly inserted by
copyists for Zedekiah. This suggestion is no impeachment of scripture, but God
does not work miracles to keep scribes right or printers right. They may easily
misread the original, particularly in the matter of a name or a date.
In this instance, the scripture itself makes plain the mistake, because,
undoubtedly Jehoiakim and Zedekiah did not reign together. Zedekiah was after
Jehoiakim. Then verse 3 says, "By the hand of the messengers which come to
Jerusalem unto Zedekiah king of Judah"; so that Zedekiah was reigning at the
time of the prophecy of the bonds and the yokes. It follows' that Jeremiah 26
was in the days of Jehoiakim, but Jeremiah 27 in the days of Zedekiah.
A fresh message is sent on this occasion to the nations commanding them to take
the yoke of submission to the king of Babylon. The foreign messengers or
ambassadors are to carry the word to their respective lords, "Thus saith
Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, Thus shall ye say unto your masters; I
have made the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground, by My
great power and by My outstretched arm, and have given it unto whom it seemeth
meet unto Me. And now have I given all these lands into the hand of
Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant; and the beasts of the field
have I given him also to serve him" (verses 4-6).
It is plain that
Jehovah is speaking in a peremptory way. In the days of Zedekiah, there is no
word of repentance nor of Jehovah's repenting. His word to Judah and the
nations becomes absolute, speaking as Creator and Governor. Jeremiah warns that
divine judgment would fall, not only upon Zedekiah king of Judah but upon the
Ammonites and Moabites and the surrounding nations. All are to be given into
the hands of Nebuchadnezzar to be under the yoke of bondage to him. God had
granted them time to repent, but they had not used the opportunity. It was now
too late, and they must all wear the Babylonian yokes and bonds.
The
opening verse of Jeremiah 28 confirms what has been said about the date in the
previous chapter. Both events were in the reign of Zedekiah. "And it came to
pass the same year, in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, in
the fourth year, and in the fifth month, that Hananiah the son of Azur the
prophet, which was of Gibeon, spake unto me in the house of Jehovah, in the
presence of the priests, and of all the people."
At this time the
iniquity and enmity of the false prophets become more manifest than ever.
Hananiah resents in the strongest way Jeremiah's prediction. He prophesied in
the name of Jehovah, "Within two full years will I bring again into this place"
from Babylon all the vessels of the temple. This was the false witness of
restoration that Hananiah bore in the presence of Jeremiah, who in answer only
said, "Amen, Jehovah do so" (verse 6). Hananiah predicted that Judah's yoke
under Nebuchadnezzar would in two full years be broken. Jeremiah with great
meekness says, "Amen, Jehovah do so." If such was His will, the true prophet
was content.
Hananiah gave a sign with his false prophecy, taking the
yoke from off Jeremiah's neck, breaking it and saying, "Thus saith Jehovah,
Even so, will I break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the neck
of all nations"; but Jeremiah went his way without any reply (verse 11). This
self-restraint is a great lesson for us; the servant of the Lord shall not
strive. The same man, Jeremiah, who had been like a brazen wall, who had
resisted kings and prophets and priests to the face, now refuses to contend
with the prophet Hananiah.
The reason for his conduct is plain.
Jeremiah did remonstrate, and warn while there was a hope of repentance or when
long-suffering grace called for it, but where there was no conscience at work,
where there was a false pretence of the name of the Lord, he simply goes his
way. He leaves God to judge between prophet and prophet. If Jeremiah was true,
Hananiah was false. He was perfectly sure that he was true himself. He allows,
therefore, the word and the act of Hananiah to be before the consciences of the
men of Judah, without adding a word of his own. He would have weakened his
former testimony, if he had said one single word more.
Jeremiah even
wished that Hananiah's prophecy of immediate deliverance from the yoke of
Babylon might be true; but there had been no repentance in Judah. It is always
a mark of false prophecies that in a day of evil they promised prosperity. When
the people of God have departed from Him, false prophets prophesy smooth
things. They have their glowing dreams of progress and of the extension of the
work and blessing of the Lord. The coming of great things and pleasant things
is their invariable testimony. A true prophet, on the contrary, in the day of
evil warns of the coming of the Lord to judge the ungodly. This is what
Jeremiah did. But Hananiah held out the welcome prospect that a general
deliverance from servitude to the king of Babylon was close at hand.
But afterwards God gave Jeremiah a word to say to Hananiah. "Go and tell
Hananiah, saying, Thus saith Jehovah; Thou hast broken the yokes of wood; but
thou shalt make for them yokes of iron. For thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the
God of Israel; I have put a yoke of iron upon the neck of all these nations,
that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and they shall serve him:
and I have given him the beasts of the field also. Then said the prophet
Jeremiah unto Hananiah the prophet, Hear now, Hananiah; Jehovah hath not sent
thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie. Therefore thus saith
Jehovah; Behold, I will cast thee from off the face of the earth: this year
thou shalt die, because thou hast taught rebellion against Jehovah. So Hananiah
the prophet died the same year in the seventh month" (verses 13-17). It was a
solemn public vindication of the truth of Jeremiah's prophecies and the falsity
and deceit of Hananiah's.
In Jeremiah 29, the prophet sent a letter
unto the residue of the elders which were carried away captive to Babylon in
the time of Jeconiah the king of Judah (2 Kings 24: 12-16). And the word of
Jehovah of hosts commanded them to submit implicitly to Nebuchadnezzar. They
were not only not to rebel, but they were to obey. They were no longer Jews
under the direct government of God in their own land, but they were to
recognise the authority of the Gentile king whom God had now set over them
because of their sins.
The captives were in a new political
relationship. They required special direction from God, for undoubtedly the
Jewish spirit would have strongly resented the notion of a Gentile ruling over
them. They would have been always plotting in Babylon how to put an end to this
miserable captivity unless God had expressed His mind. But the part of faith,
when God sends a chastening, is to bow to it, not to fight against it. If the
Lord does anything because of a wrong on our part, faith in Him does not
consist in making light of the thing or in making light of the chastening, but
in accepting with meekness the chastening and in confessing the wrong.
This subjection to their exile was what Jeremiah impressed upon the Jews in
Babylon. "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, unto all that are
carried away captives, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem
unto Babylon: build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat
the fruit of them; take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters" (verses 4-6).
There was to be nothing morbid in their habits. They were to take from God all
the circumstances. They were happily to trust in the Lord, but to do so as
captives to Nebuchadnezzar. Nay, they were even to seek the good and peace of
Babylon. "Take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that
they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not
diminished. And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be
carried away captives, and pray unto Jehovah for it."
Now souls not
really bowing to God are always morbid, murmuring in their affliction, and
avoiding the common duties of life. The pious do not shut the* eyes to what is
painful, nor are they insensible in their adversity. There would be no piety in
ignoring the truth of things, but feeling the affliction, they seek grace from
God to take the hardship from His hand with all patience.
"For thus
saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel; Let not your prophets and your
diviners, that be in the midst of you, deceive you, neither hearken to your
dreams which ye cause to be dreamed. For they prophesy falsely unto you in My
name: I have not sent them, saith Jehovah. For thus saith Jehovah," instead of
Hananiah's two years, "that after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I
will visit you, and perform My good word toward you, in causing you to return
to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith Jehovah,
thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye
call upon Me, and ye shall go and pray unto Me, and I will hearken unto you.
And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your
heart. And I will be found of you, saith Jehovah: and I will turn away your
captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places
whither I have driven you, saith Jehovah; and I will bring you again into the
place whence I caused you to be carried away captive" (verses 8-14).
This predicted return from captivity was, no doubt, accomplished in a measure
when the return took place under Cyrus, the king of Persia, although the terms
of the prophecy go beyond that, but still there was an accomplishment at that
time. Then Jehovah speaks concerning those Jews still remaining in Jerusalem
under Zedekiah: "Know that thus saith Jehovah of the king that sitteth upon the
throne of David, and of all the people that dwelleth in this city and of your
brethren that are not gone forth with you into captivity; Thus saith Jehovah of
hosts; Behold, I will send upon them the sword, and the famine, and the
pestilence." This is not a promise of the return from Babylon under a son of
David. The son of David was to suffer chastisement still more. There had been
already a son of David carried into captivity. There was another son of David
still reigning in Jerusalem, and the pestilence and the sword were doomed to
fall upon him.
But Jeremiah 30 contains Jehovah's prophecy of the
final restoration of His people at the end. "The word that came to Jeremiah
from Jehovah, saying, Thus speaketh Jehovah God of Israel, saying, Write thee
all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book. For, lo, the days come,
saith Jehovah, that I will bring again the captivity of My people Israel and
Judah, saith Jehovah; and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave
to their fathers, and they shall possess it. And these are the words that the
Lord spake concerning Israel and concerning Judah. For thus saith Jehovah, We
have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace. Ask ye now, and see
whether a man doth travail with child? Wherefore do I see every man with his
hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into
paleness? Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it" (Jer. 30: 1-7).
It is impossible to say that this promised restoration of both Israel
and Judah has been accomplished. The peculiarity of this unparalleled time of
suffering is that although it is the worst time of sorrow that Israel will have
ever known, out of that time they shall have salvation. "It is even the time of
Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it" (verse 7). Such trouble with
accompanying deliverance for Israel and Jacob has never been the case from
Jeremiah's day to this. The Maccabean successes over their enemies were as
nothing when compared with this prophecy. We also have a prediction of them in
Daniel 11. There is a history of them in Josephus and in the Apocrypha, but
Scripture does not deign to give any account of the Maccabean successes.
When the Roman power came into the ascendant, Israel and Judah were
not saved. Pompey captured Jerusalem; and afterwards Titus not only captured
but destroyed the city, and the Jews were scattered again.
So that
while there have been many times of trouble for the Jews, there has never yet
been an unparalleled trouble, after which they were saved. All the times of
trouble that they have gone through on any large scale so far have only ended
in further troubles. Things have always gone against the Jew, with the single
exception, as I have said, of the Maccabean risings, the results of which were
very small indeed, when compared with the terms of this prophecy.
"For
it shall come to pass in that day, saith Jehovah of hosts, that I will break
his yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no
more serve themselves of him (Jacob)." Why, strangers have been serving
themselves of Jacob up to this hour! The Jews have never yet obtained their
national independence - never.
"But they shall serve Jehovah their
God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them" (verse 9). This will
be the days of the Messiah: "Jehovah their God, and David their king." It is
certain the prophecy applies to the Jewish people as a whole undivided nation.
The prophecy, therefore, is unfulfilled.
In the rest of Jeremiah 30
there are moral appeals to the captives in Babylon. They were to take courage
from Jehovah's comforting word, and not to be dismayed. "For I will restore
health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith Jehovah; because
they called thee an Outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom no man seeketh after.
Thus saith Jehovah; Behold, I will bring again the captivity of Jacob's tents,
and have mercy on his dwelling-places; and the city shall be builded upon her
own heap"; that is, after her destruction Jerusalem will be builded again; "and
the palace shall remain after the manner thereof. And out of them shall proceed
thanksgiving and the voice of them that make merry: and I will multiply them,
and they shall not be few; I will also glorify them, and they shall not be
small. Their children also shall be as aforetime, and their congregation shall
be established before Me, and I will punish all that oppress them. And their
nobles shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed from the midst
of them" (verses 17-21); whereas generally the case was usually the very
contrary; the governor himself proceeded from the conquering power. And Jehovah
added, "Ye shall be My people and I will be your God," showing the restoration
would be not merely revival as a nation, but also communion with God in worship
and service.
So in Jeremiah 31, this new relationship to God is made
very distinct. "At the same time, saith Jehovah, will I be the God of all the
families of Israel." There is to be a complete restoration of the scattered and
dispersed tribes not of Judah only but of Israel: "all the families of Israel."
Nothing can be more distinct. "Thus saith Jehovah, The people which were left
of the sword found grace in the wilderness; even Israel, when I went to cause
him to rest."
Then in a very beautiful manner this chapter delineates
the mighty intervention of God. He "will bring them from the north country, and
gather them from the coasts of the earth, and with them the blind and the lame,
the woman with child and her that travaileth with child together" (verse 8). It
is a complete deliverance, so that even the suffering and the sick will be
brought safely back by God's command and care. He will ensure their safe
entrance into the holy land. The recovery of the nations is to be, therefore,
complete. If any persons were likely to be left behind when Israel is being
gathered, it would, of course, be the sick and helpless, such as here
described; but no, all are brought back. Jehovah will forget none.
Further, Israel will not return with vainglory and pride, as if their own arm
had delivered them. Their salvation in that day will not be due to the
influence of money or to diplomacy, or to anything of man. "They shall come
with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them." It will be a real work
of God in them and for them. A work of repentance in their souls will accompany
their restoration. "For I am a Father to Israel, and Ephraim is My firstborn"
(verse 9).
In this chapter occurs the well-known scripture which is
applied to Herod's destruction of the innocents, as they are called, at
Bethlehem. "Thus saith Jehovah; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and
bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her
children because they were not" (verse 15). It is beautiful to see that the
Holy Spirit (Matt. 2: 17, 18) applies to that event the passage about sorrow
but not that about joy. Here is what follows: "Thus saith Jehovah; Refrain thy
voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded,
saith Jehovah; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy" (verse
16).
Now the evangelist did not quote this verse. He only referred to
what was fulfilled. There was bitter sorrow then, even in the birthplace of
royalty. Deep anguish was in the place where there ought to have been the
greatest joy. The birth of the Messiah ought to have been the signal for
universal joy in the land of Israel. And there would have been if there had
been faith in God and His promise, but there was not. Moreover, since the state
of the people was one of shameful unbelief so there was an Edomite usurper on
the throne. Hence violence and deceit ruled in the land, and Rachel wept for
her children and could not be comforted because they were not. So the Holy
Spirit applied the first part of the prophecy, but there He stops. When the
entire prophecy is fulfilled, there will be sorrow again in the land, great
sorrow, but there will also be joy. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy
cometh in the morning." "And there is hope in thine end, saith Jehovah, that
thy children shall come again to their own border" (verse 17).
Then
comes the repentance of Ephraim. "I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself
thus"; and the Lord shows that this work of contrition which undoubtedly begins
in their souls is carried on to its end. "Surely after that I was turned, I
repented; and after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh: I was
ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth"
(verse, 19).
The Lord shows His feeling of love for the repentant one.
"Is Ephraim My dear son? Is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him,
I do earnestly remember him still: therefore My bowels are troubled for him; I
will surely have mercy upon him, saith Jehovah. Set thee up waymarks, make thee
high heaps: set thine heart toward the highway, even the way which thou
wentest: turn again, O virgin of Israel, turn again to these thy cities"
(verses 20, 21). It is the final return of Israel to their own land after long
wandering. "How long wilt thou go about, O thou backsliding daughter? for
Jehovah hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall compass a man"
(verse 22).
It has been common among the Fathers as well as the
divines that have followed them to apply this passage to the birth of the Lord
of the Virgin Mary, but the prophecy has not the smallest reference to it. A
woman compassing a man is not at all the same thing as the Virgin compassing
and bearing a son. Compassing a man has no reference whatever to the birth of a
child. The meaning is that a woman who is regarded as the weakest of the human
race should overcome even the strongest man. The term for man here implies a
man of might. He is expressly not an ordinary man but a hero, a man of might;
and, contrary to the ordinary course of nature, the weak woman overthrows the
powerful man.
Such is the idea of the phrase. The true force of
"compass" is not only to oppose or resist but even to defeat all the man's
strength. And so God will cause this woman, who is clearly a figure of the
backsliding daughter of Israel in her great weakness, to be an overcomer.
Though she is in the very weakest state and all the might of the man is against
her, she will nevertheless compass the man and be victorious.
There
will be in the coming time a complete change for Israel in the manner of what
we know in our blessed Lord Himself. We often sing in one of our hymns, "By
weakness and defeat, He won the meed and crown," so in that day the Lord will
reproduce His own victory in His people. "Not by might nor by power, but by My
Spirit, saith the Lord." The woman is the symbol of the nation in their
weakness, and the compassing a man is their victory over all human resources
brought to bear against them.
This view gives a very simple meaning to
this symbolic sentence, without forcing a reference to the virgin birth of
Christ. Indeed Jeremiah does not make any distinct reference to the Messiah's
birth. He predicts the Messiah as a king reigning. He does not look at His
birth, His life, His death, or His cross, but at the nation of Israel, and at
the Lord Jesus in His national relationship to them as their King, as "David
their king."
Now this special line in their ministry gives great
symmetry to the prophets. There is always great propriety in the various
prophecies. The prophets do not all bring in the Messiah in the same way.
Isaiah is the most comprehensive of all the prophets, and brings in the Messiah
in every way. Some of them only foretell the Messiah as a sufferer, and others
as a glorious conqueror. One may show Him in both aspects, but usually some
present Him in one way and some in another. There is always a relation between
the particular scope of the prophecy and the manner in which Christ is
introduced in it.
The effect of this assurance of coming blessing for
his people upon the prophet's mind was that his sleep was sweet unto him (verse
26). He was refreshed by the knowledge that God will work for His people in the
time of their greatest weakness and bring about such happy results. The
prophecy that follows is in entire accordance with this intimation.
"Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will sow the house of Israel and
the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast. And it
shall come to pass, that like as I have watched over them to pluck up and to
break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict; so will I watch
over them to build, and to plant, saith Jehovah. In those days they shall say
no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set
on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth
the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold, the days come, saith
Jehovah, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the
house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in
the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt"
(verses 27-32).
Now it is very evident that in this passage we have
the prophet who completely rejects such a thought and who shows that there is
to be a vast change of covenant relationship. It will be no dishonour to the
law of Moses that God will establish a new covenant under the Messiah; in fact
Moses himself predicted it. He foretold that the Lord God was to raise up a
prophet like unto himself, but although like unto him, superior to him (Deut.
18: 15, 18). There would be no superiority in this prophet if he did not
introduce a new state of things, that is, the new covenant. Moses brought in
the old covenant. Christ will bring in the new covenant.
I do not say
we, Christians, have got the new covenant itself, but we have got the blood of
the new covenant. We have that on which the new covenant is founded. The new
covenant itself supposes the land of Israel blessed and the house of Israel
delivered, but neither the one nor the other has become true yet. The new
covenant supposes certain spiritual blessings, namely, the law of God written
in the heart and our sins forgiven. These spiritual parts of the new covenant
we have received now, along with other blessings peculiar to Christianity,
namely, the presence of the Holy Ghost and union with Christ in heaven which
the Jews will not have.
But nothing can be more evident than that this
prophecy refutes the Jew when he imagines that it is a dishonour to the law for
God to bring in anything better than what was enjoyed in the days of Moses. In
this passage the marked contrast between the two covenants is most clearly
shown, and the special features of the new. "This shall be the covenant that I
will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith Jehovah, I will put
My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their
God, and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his
neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know Jehovah: for they shall all
know Me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith Jehovah: for I
will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more" (verses 33,
34). These two verses apply to the Christian just as much as they will to the
Jew, but what follows does not apply to Christians, nor to the Jews now, for
they are not a nation. "Thus saith Jehovah, which giveth the sun for a light by
day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night,
which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; Jehovah of hosts is His
name: if those ordinances depart from before Me, saith Jehovah, then the seed
of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me for ever" (verses 35,
36).
To show that this prophecy is not to be understood merely in an
allegorical way, but literally, the prophet says, "Behold, the days come, saith
Jehovah, that the city shall be built to Jehovah from the tower of Hanameel
unto the gate of the corner" (verse 38). This is not the city in the heavens,
whose maker and builder is God. It is not the new Jerusalem that comes down
from heaven from God, because there is no tower of Hanameel there. There is no
such thing as measuring the corner there. "And the measuring line shall yet go
forth over against it upon the hill Gareb, and shall compass about to Goath"
(verse 39). They are the old localities and gates of the city of Jerusalem; and
God will renew them in the day that is coming.
Further, the prophet
speaks of "the whole valley of the dead bodies." Surely no one is so insane as
to suppose that there is a valley of dead bodies in the new Jerusalem. "And the
whole valley of the dead bodies, and of the ashes, and all the fields unto the
brook of Kidron, unto the corner of the horse gate toward the east, shall be
holy unto Jehovah; it shall not be plucked up, nor thrown down any more for
ever" (verse 40). The truth is that the idea is so unfounded that there is the
danger in our saying too much about it, of giving the impression that one was
merely trying to make the scheme ridiculous.
In Jeremiah 32, this
prophecy of the new covenant is followed up by a very striking incident in
which the prophet's faith in his own prediction is tested. The Lord allows His
servants to be tested constantly. If the Lord gives us to witness to some great
truth we shall have to prove our own faith in that truth. Jeremiah was put to
such a test in the following circumstances. "The word came to Jeremiah from
Jehovah in the tenth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, which was the eighteenth
year of Nebuchadnezzar. For then the king of Babylon's army besieged Jerusalem:
and Jeremiah the prophet was shut up in the court of the prison, which was in
the king of Judah's house" (verses 1, 2).
The prophet was in a very
bad case himself, and so was the city. Jerusalem was besieged and certain to be
taken by the king of Babylon. Jeremiah was not only in danger from the
Chaldeans but he was imprisoned in the city; that is, he was in double sorrow.
He was in sorrow from the Jews even more than from the Gentiles.
Such
a time one would suppose was most unsuitable for the transaction of business,
but the transaction then undertaken was one eminently of faith, specially
demanding the prophet's utmost confidence in the testimony that God had raised
him up to bear. Accordingly, he purchased the field of Hanameel.
But
at this very time, Jeremiah had given a striking word and a very serious one
concerning the king. "And Zedekiah king of Judah shall not escape out of the
hand of the Chaldeans, but shall surely be delivered into the hand of the king
of Babylon, and shall speak with him mouth to mouth, and his eyes shall behold
his eyes; and he shall lead Zedekiah to Babylon, and there shall he be until I
visit him, saith Jehovah: though he fight with the Chaldeans ye shall not
prosper" (verses 4, 5).
The capture of the city was imminent, but
Jeremiah said, "The word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Behold, Hanameel, the
son of Shallum thine uncle, shall come unto thee, saying, Buy thee my field
that is in Anathoth." What a time to buy a field! The city certain to be taken,
the prophet himself in prison! There was no escape, according to his own word,
from the Babylonian army, and, further, there was no escape from the hostile
power of those that ruled in Jerusalem, for his testimony was dead against
their pride and their false patriotism.
Yet, at such a juncture
Jeremiah's uncle asked him to buy a field. What! when they were about to be all
swept out of the land and carried into captivity! Should he then buy a field?
What could be the ground for such a transaction? But it was Jehovah Who bade
him do it. The purchase was a testimony of the greatest value, showing that in
spite of the desolation, in spite of the destruction of the city, Jeremiah
believed that the Jews would return to their possessions, and that land would
still be cultivated and houses built there.
It is recorded in Roman
history that at the time when the Gauls were encamped around Rome, the very
land on which the Gauls had raised their tents was bought and sold, and this
was considered one of the greatest proofs of confidence in the future destinies
of Rome that this was done. There is no event, perhaps, in history, like it. I
do not recollect that in any siege of any other place, except in this case of
Rome, there ever was such a transaction.
But there is a weighty
difference between the two events. The Roman magnified that deed and recorded
it in his history as a proof of his iron will. They knew right well that there
was more toughness in the Roman than in the Gaul, and although the Gaul might
gain some little advantage for a time the Roman iron would prove stronger than
the Gallic fire. They knew right well that although the Gauls might be
impetuous and might gain the victory for the day, Rome would rise again and
would repel them and trample them under her feet. And so it was.
But
how different was the spirit of Jeremiah! He was a sufferer from his own
people, himself owning that the hand of God was stretched out against
Jerusalem. Nevertheless, he, on the simple faith of God's word and not having
the smallest confidence in his own power, and there being no display of
confidence in Zedekiah or the people of the Jews, acted in this calm and
striking fashion in the face of the overpowering weight of the Chaldean power
that was raised up of God to trample down the proud and rebellious city of
Jerusalem.
But Jeremiah bought the field of his uncle according to the
provisions of the law of the Lord. He bought it because he had confidence in
the restoration of Israel - not only the final restoration but the partial one
after the lapse of seventy years. It seems to me, therefore, that we have a
beautiful answer to the pride of Rome in the faith of Jeremiah.
"So
Hanameel, mine uncle's son, came to me in the court of the prison, according to
the word of Jehovah, and said unto me, Buy my field, I pray thee, that is in
Anathoth, which is in the country of Benjamin: for the right of inheritance is
thine, and the redemption is thine; buy it for thyself. Then I knew that this
was the word of Jehovah" (verse 8). Jehovah had first told the prophet to buy
the field, and then Hanameel came to offer his field for sale.
"And I
bought the field of Hanameel my uncle's son, that was in Anathoth, and weighed
him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver. And I subscribed the evidence,
and sealed it, and took witnesses, and weighed him the money in the balances.
So I took the evidence of the purchase, both that which was sealed according to
the law and custom, and that which was open" (verses 9-11). All was done
according to the custom of the law. The open document was for consultation. The
sealed one was that on which all depended; it was the incontestable proof.
There is often a similar practice in a family now. A will is deposited in
Doctors' Commons, as we say, and there it always abides. It cannot be touched.
It must not be removed. It is the legal evidence on which all turns. But,
besides that, the family have a copy made by their solicitor for reference in
case of any question regarding the distribution of the property.
And
then according to the word of the Lord, Jeremiah committed the evidence of
purchase to Baruch to preserve as a witness that property would be again
possessed in the land. "And I charged Baruch before them, saying, Thus saith
Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel; Take these evidences, this evidence of the
purchase, both which is sealed, and this evidence which is open; and put them
in an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days. For thus saith Jehovah
of hosts, the God of Israel; Houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed
again in this land" (verses 13-15).
While it was quite true that
because of the abominations of the men of Judah, Jehovah would give them over
as captives to the king of Babylon, at the same time Jehovah says, "Behold, I
will gather them out of all countries, whither I have driven them in Mine
anger, and in My fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again unto
this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely: and they shall be My people,
and I will be their God: and I will give them one heart and one way that they
may fear Me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them:
and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away
from them to do them good" (verses 37-40). This is an additional word of the
Lord about the new covenant; it will be an everlasting one; He will never turn
away from His people.
We know that the Jews have never yet inherited
their land according to the new covenant, still less according to the
everlasting covenant. They are to inherit under both titles; the new covenant
to distinguish it from anything that ever was before, the everlasting covenant
to show that the new covenant will never be put out of date, or grow obsolete,
but will always be effectual and valid for their possession and their blessing.
It has been asked whether these title deeds of Jeremiah's purchase
will ever be recovered. But I cannot say. I should think they have perished
long ago; still there is nothing too hard for the Lord. I am sure, however, the
sense of them will never perish, and I have sometimes thought that they would
yet come to light.
Jehovah will yet pour out His heart of grace upon
His people. "Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant
them in this land assuredly with My whole heart and with My whole soul. For
thus saith Jehovah, Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this
people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them. And
fields shall be bought in this land, whereof ye say, It is desolate without man
or beast; it is given into the hand of the Chaldeans. Men shall buy fields for
money, and subscribe evidences, and seal them, and take witnesses in the land
of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem; and in the cities of Judah, and
in the cities of the mountains, and in the cities of the valley, and in the
cities of the south: for I will cause their captivity to return, saith Jehovah"
(verses 41-44).
It may be noticed that unbelief shows itself in two
ways that are exactly in contrast with faith. Before the threatened evil or
judgment comes from the hand of the Lord men do not believe it. They are always
hoping for a deliverance where there is no deliverance, for peace where there
is no peace. This is the first effect of unbelief - a fighting against
Jehovah's chastening. When the chastening comes, then they are all plunged into
despair: then they think all is over with the people and that there never will
be any blessing from the hand of the Lord. Now faith, on the contrary, believes
the judgment before it comes, but believes in the goodness of the Lord and that
mercy shall rejoice against judgment.
In Jeremiah 33, the Spirit of
God unfolds further this certainty of blessing for the people from the hand of
the Lord. Not only will Judah and Israel return from captivity, and buy and
sell and build and plant and be a nation restored, but Jehovah says, "I will
cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against Me; and
I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have transgressed against Me;
and it shall be to Me a name of joy, a praise and an honour before all the
nations of the earth" (verses 8, 9).
"Behold, the days come, saith
Jehovah, that I will perform that good thing which I have promised unto the
house of Israel and to the house of Judah. In those days, and at that time,
will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and He shall
execute judgment and righteousness in the land. In those days shall Judah be
saved and Jerusalem shall dwell safely: and this is the name wherewith she
shall be called, Jehovah our righteousness. For thus saith Jehovah, David shall
never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel" (verses 14-17).
This prophecy plainly foretells the full restoration Of the religious
polity as well as the civil rule under the Messiah. The nation will have
royalty in the line of David, and priesthood in the line of Aaron the Levite.
Then Jehovah gives them the pledge that He will no more break this covenant
with Israel than His covenant of day and night. "Thus saith Jehovah, If My
covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances
of heaven and earth; then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David My
servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and have
mercy on them" (verses 25, 26).
In Jeremiah 34, a comforting word is
addressed to Zedekiah, apparently because of his kindness towards the prophet.
He was an evil ruler, but he was not without kindly feeling. Many a bad man
whose conscience towards God is not utterly silenced has a great deal of
natural feeling. He has the sense that a thing is wrong, but he has no force to
do the right. He sees what is right and values the man that says what is right,
but has no spiritual power to carry him in the path of what is right.
Now Zedekiah was this kind of man. There were worse kings than he, and he
showed some disposition to listen to the prophet. Nevertheless, Zedekiah
brought on the crisis of judgment for Jerusalem and his people. It is not the
most daring man that does the worst deed. Weakness may be guilty where there is
no looking to God for strength. And such was the case with Zedekiah. But the
Lord showed him mercy, because, I think, of what he had done to His servant
Jeremiah. "Thou shalt not die by the sword, but thou shalt die in peace." How
gracious is Jehovah! He tempered the judgment which fell upon Zedekiah because
of a certain relenting in the heart of the king towards His prophet. The kindly
act is not forgotten by God.
In Jeremiah 35, the obedience of the
Rechabites is set before the men of Judah to make them feel that some men, at
least, showed more reverence for an earthly father than Israel showed for God
Himself. The Rechabites were a certain class of Arabs - Bedouins of the desert,
as we say - who were true to the requisition of their father. He had bound them
neither to build houses nor to drink wine, and these men had carried out the
will of their father for a long time.
Now when the Rechabites sought
refuge in Jerusalem because of Nebuchadnezzar, their fidelity to their father's
request is used as a solemn condemnation of the disobedience of the children of
Judah. The inhabitants of Jerusalem were bidden to accept instruction from the
sight of these Rechabites who even in the time of the impending siege would not
depart from the regulations of their father. They might have pleaded the
circumstances as an excuse for disobeying at that time, but they remained
faithful to their fathers. "And Jeremiah said unto the house of the Rechabites,
Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel; because ye have obeyed the
commandment of Jonadab your father, and kept all his precepts, and done
according unto all that he hath commanded you: therefore thus saith Jehovah of
hosts, the God of Israel: Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to
stand before Me for ever" (verses 18, 19). And I have no doubt that the Lord is
preserving a portion of this very race to this day.
Jeremiah 36 shows
a very different king. Jehoiakim had been an evil ruler, but bolder and more
obstinate than Zedekiah. And what brought out Jehoiakim's iniquity was the roll
that the prophet wrote. "Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the
words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and
against all the nations, from the day that I spake unto thee, from the days of
Josiah, even unto this day. It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the
evil which I purpose to do unto them; that they may return every man from his
evil way; that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin. Then Jeremiah called
Baruch the son of Neriah; and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the
words of Jehovah which He had spoken unto him, upon a roll of a book. And
Jeremiah commanded Baruch, saying, I am shut up; I cannot go into the house of
Jehovah: therefore go thou, and read in the roll, which thou hast written from
my mouth, the words of Jehovah in the ears of the people in Jehovah's house
upon the fasting day: and also thou shalt read them in the ears of all Judah
that come out of their cities. It may be they will present their supplication
before Jehovah, and will return every one from his evil way: for great is the
anger and the fury that Jehovah hath pronounced against this people" (verses
2-7).
Baruch did so. "And it came to pass in the fifth year of
Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, in the ninth month, that they
proclaimed a fast before Jehovah to all the people in Jerusalem and to all the
people that came back from the cities of Judah unto Jerusalem. Then read Baruch
in the book the words of Jeremiah in the house of Jehovah" (verses 9, 10).
Then Micaiah, who had listened, went down in to the king's house,
where all the princes were sitting in the scribe's chamber, and declared to
them all the words he had heard. Then the princes sent to Baruch for the roll,
and being afraid at what they heard, they proposed to tell the king. "And they
went into the king into the court, but they laid up the roll in the chamber of
Elishama the scribe, and told all the words in the ears of the king. So the
king sent Jehudi to fetch the roll: and he took it out of Elishama the scribe's
chamber. And Jehudi read it in the ears of the king, and in the ears of all the
princes which stood beside the king" (verses 20, 21). The poor king showed his
utter unbelief. His way of getting rid of the judgment was by destroying the
roll. "And it came to pass that when Jehudi had read three or four leaves, he
cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth,
until all the roll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth" (verse 23).
This was an act of daring impiety before God; futile and perfect folly, but not
the less sin.
The result was that Jehovah told Jeremiah to take
"another roll and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll,
which Jehoiakim the king of Judah hath burned. And thou shalt say to Jehoiakim,
king of Judah, Thus saith Jehovah; Thou hast burned this roll, saying, Why hast
thou written therein, saying, The king of Babylon shall certainly come and
destroy this land, and shall cause to cease from thence man and beast?
Therefore thus saith Jehovah of Jehoiakim king of Judah; He shall have none to
sit upon the throne of David: and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to
the heat, and in the night to the frost.
And I will punish him and his
seed and his servants for their iniquity; and I will bring upon them, and upon
the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah, all the evil that I
have pronounced against them" (verses 28- 31).
The old roll was
repeated with many like words, and more were added according to the invariable
way of God. Unbelief never hinders but rather accomplishes the judgments of
God. It may add to them but it never diminishes them.
Jeremiah 37
describes the vain efforts of Zedekiah and his nobles to escape from the
Chaldean. This description is continued in Jeremiah 38, where we also read of
Jeremiah sunk into a dungeon, and only through Zedekiah's kindness was he kept
from death. But in that wicked house there was one that feared the Lord, and he
was Ebed-melech, the Ethiopian, who showed compassion for the prophet in the
dungeon and did much for his rescue.
Jeremiah 39 shows us the capture
of Jerusalem and the flight of Zedekiah. The king, however, was caught, and
(what he dreaded most of all) was brought before the Chaldean conqueror. He was
carried ignominiously to Babylon, his eyes put out and himself bound in chains.
Jeremiah contrariwise was cared for by the king of Babylon. And Ebed-melech was
not forgotten.
In Jeremiah 40 to Jeremiah 44, we have the anarchy and
moral disorder that prevailed among the Jews who were left behind in the land
or its vicinity when the mass of their brethren had been carried captive to
Babylon. Jeremiah becomes their helper, ministering to them the word of
Jehovah, but finds among them the greatest unbelief. This obduracy of heart was
most sorrowful and heart-breaking to the prophet. Their unbelief in Jehovah
previously had brought the crisis of destruction upon Jerusalem. But now even
the little remnant, the poor left in the land among whom Jeremiah remained,
were full of jealousy, full of their own plans, full of treason, full of deceit
and violence. God was not really in their thoughts.
All these things
fill the prophet's heart with sorrow. To escape the wrath of the king of
Babylon many flee into Egypt where they practise its idolatries. The doings of
their various leaders are recounted, Gedaliah and Ishmael, and then Johanan,
one only of them having the least care for the people of God, the others served
themselves.
The prophet announced what would fall upon the Jews who
tried to escape by going down into Egypt. He showed them that there they would
only incur trouble from the hands of Nebuchadnezzar still more. Had they
remained quietly in the land subject to the authority of the Chaldean king whom
God had placed over them, they would have been preserved. But they, choosing
human policy, thought it was safer to go down into Egypt, whereas it proved to
be the contrary. Nebuchadnezzar pursued the Egyptians and punished these
unbelieving Jews in that land.
In Jeremiah 45, the word which Jeremiah
the prophet spake unto Baruch, his amanuensis, is now brought before us. The
great lesson for Baruch was that in a day of judgment the proper feeling for a
saint and servant of God is an absence of self-seeking. "Seekest though great
things for thyself? seek them not: for, behold, I will bring evil upon all
flesh" (Jer. 45: 5). Lowliness of mind always becomes the saint, but in an evil
day, it is the only safety. Humility is always morally right, but it is also
the only thing that preserves from judgment. I am speaking now not of God's
final judgment, but of that which is executed in this world. Now it seems to me
plain that Baruch had not learned this lesson. He had now to learn it. This was
the word of the prophet to him at an earlier date - the fourth year of
Jehoiakim.
In Jeremiah 46 we have the denunciation of Egypt where
these foolish Jews had fled for security, and the further denunciation of
Philistia in Jeremiah 47. Then again of Moab (Jer.48): because all these
countries were places to which the Jews looked for security. In Jeremiah 49 the
judgment of the Ammonites is given with Damascus and others, even Elam. Elam
differs from the rest in being at a considerable distance from Jerusalem, while
the others were comparatively near.
These nations were all to fall
under the power of Nebuchadnezzar; but some of them are to be restored in the
latter day. Among these nations will be Elam, Egypt, Moab and Ammon, but not
Philistia, not Damascus, not Hazor, and above all not Babylon, whose
destruction is brought before us in chapters 1 and 51 in great detail.
The whole prophecy of Jeremiah closes with an inspired appendix (Jer. 52),
probably by the editor, containing a brief historical account of Zedekiah's
reign up to the destruction of Jerusalem by the king of Babylon. The final
incident (verses 31-34) records the clemency shown by Evilmerodach, the king of
Babylon, to Jehoiakim king of Judah in the thirty-seventh year of his
captivity.