Jeremiah 2:31-37

Divine Questions

Jer 2:31-37

This appeal was addressed to the men who were immediately round about the prophet. It was therefore direct, personal, and was to be answered by the living voice. This is the kind of preaching we do not like. This preaching would empty any church in the world! Yet it is the only preaching that is worthy of attention. It is in vain that we refer to ancient history if we cannot apply it to modern instances. We are trifling with ourselves that is to say, with our souls if we think only of truths that are abstract and without immediate application to our own condition. The prophets thus spake to the men that were near at hand. In a sense, they seemed to arrest those; men, and put questions to them. Surely, if we will not allow others to arrest us, we ought to arrest ourselves, and put down plain answers to plain questions, without hurry, or din, or noise; and we ought to take both plain question and plain answer into religious solitude, and look at them until we burn with shame, renouncing every plea of self-excuse, and accepting the divine judgment as divine righteousness: then will come healing, then we shall get at the bottom of things, and be real: the cure is not from without, it is from above, and goes immediately to the core and root of all human wrong.

The people were required to answer two questions: "Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? have I been a land of darkness unto Israel?" Speak out. If God is chargeable with wrong, say so. Put your finger directly upon his errors, and say in plain terms, God is responsible for this: these are not human slips trifling, petty mistakes, but the miscarriages of justice, the perversions of providence, the mistakes of God. Let us have plain language all round. We may lose ourselves if we begin to multiply words indefinitely. The question is "Have I been a wilderness unto Israel?" have I pinched and starved my people? have I led them amongst stony places? have I been inhospitable to the lives that looked to me for bread and security and nourishment? Say so, if it be so. "Have I been a land of darkness?" have I plunged Israel into night unlighted by a star? have I been cold, pitiless, cruel? If you have an impeachment to bring even against God, do not fear to bring it. He asks for it. Tell him when you have finished the infinite accusation that you have written at his bidding, and there is your indictment against his throne. A wondrous tenderness inspires the inquiry. It seems, indeed, to bring its own answer with it. There are some questions that are also replies: for the very tone in which they are put signifies the only possible answer that is correct. So the father might plead with his child "Have I been a wilderness unto thee, or a land of darkness? have I been deaf to entreaty? have I been without sympathy in the time of affliction? have I but half-opened the door when you have sought to return to my love and my confidence?" The very inquiry is a defence; the very method of the inquiry means, It is impossible to answer this but in one way. Why not put this question to ourselves? Why not answer it in our mother tongue? We should indeed be writing our own judgment, and sentencing ourselves to deserved penal servitude. But it is always well to be true, to come at the whole truth, in all its roundness: it is painful at the time, it seems to rend a man in twain when he has to tell all the truth; but it is a rending that means reconstruction, salvation, health, growth, and progress evermore. But who can tell the whole truth? It can be told in letters without always being told in spirit; or the words of confession can themselves be so pronounced as to take out of them all that is essential to true acknowledgment of sin. Why do we play the fool with ourselves, and by dividing ourselves cheat ourselves, by saying one thing to the understanding, and another to the imagination, a third thing to conscience, and a fourth to appetite and desire? Self-analysis, and telling the truth to oneself, may be said to be the beginning of reformation and the very pledge and seal of a lofty, noble life.

Having answered a question respecting God, they have next to answer a question respecting themselves: "Wherefore say my people, We are lords; we will come no more unto thee?" Literally, why do my people say, We will rove at will. That is licence, not liberty? They have lost the centre, and are plunging evermore in chaos, without being able to give an account of themselves or to use what benefit might lie within their power. Why this new cry namely, We will do as we like? Why this so-called freethought? why this progress which means running round and round and never advancing by one measurable inch? How very early men begin to be free thinkers! How soon sin. says to a man, Rove at will; do what you like: you are a man! Then the poor fool thinks he is a man, and begins to "play fantastic tricks before high heaven." He forgets that we have only liberty to obey. He ignores the metaphysics of the case, and blunders day by day amid its bewildering accidents. The reality of the case as between man and God is simply this: God is Creator, man is creature, what is the duty of the creature to the Creator but to wait upon him, to ask his will, to say in his own tones, Father, teach me everything: the universe is very great, and I am very little: thy sea is very large, my body is very small: the darkness comes down quite suddenly, and I cannot make the most even of the light, because when it comes for a long time it dazzles and blinds me so that more than half my time is not at my disposal for high uses even if I could so employ it, Lord, father-mother, gentle One, guide me in every thought and word and action all the day, and take care of me when I cannot take care of myself, even pretendedly, during the hours of unconsciousness, and thus feed me, lead me, guide me, O thou great Jehovah!

Then the Lord seems to adopt a kind of taunting tone:

"Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number" ( Jer 2:32 ).

Now the voice changes, and the element of accusation enters into it very sharply:

"Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways" ( Jer 2:33 ).

Mark the hardening process of sin as referred to in the thirty-fourth verse:

"Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor innocents: I have not found it by secret search, but upon all these." ( Jer 2:34 )

"Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria" ( Jer 2:36 ).

Literally, Why all these shifting policies? why all these new alliances? why be performing a kind of moral conjuring? The bad man gads about, or walks about, from place to place, saying, "Where shall I settle next? what communion shall I take up with now? what novelty is there in the town today? Is there any new church built that I can go to, until I make the place too hot for myself by neglecting its institutions and turning my back upon its appeals? Is there anything new in Egypt? I am tired of Babylon: I lived a long time in Assyria, and now I have cast all that off, and I am looking in Egyptian directions for new alliances and new hopes." Is this only an ancient experience? Is it not a clear and simple reading of today's purpose and action? Are there not many people who are all things by turns and nothing long men who are wanting in conviction and thorough persuasion of soul, incapable of enthusiasm, driven about by every wind of doctrine; men who have called at all the hovels cf heresy, and have never settled in the sanctuary of truth? We need not alter the terms; they are simple as our best-known mother tongue, and they will stand for the purposes of scrutiny all the while, not needing change or modification. Be something. Belong to somebody. Do not mistake roving at will for a safe dwelling at home. No Christian teacher will say, You must be this rather than that, so far as ecclesiastical relations are concerned; but every Christian teacher will say, Take advice: consider: come to conclusions, and be steadfast: prove all things; hold fast that which is good; in understanding be no more children, but be men.

What was the result of this trimming and gadding about, this changing between Assyria and Egypt?

"Yea, thou shalt go forth from him, and thine hands upon thine head, for the Lord hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shall not prosper in them" ( Jer 2:37 ).

After all, having been in the houses we have mentioned, either as owners or as visitors the houses of wealth, health, invention, pleasure, we can now say soberly, with the quietness of unalterable conviction, There is only one altar that can be trusted the altar of the living God the Cross of God's own Son. Let us renounce our false confidences, put away our new tricks, and come straight back to the eternal thought the love which was before the foundations of the earth. Men will continue to be betrayed by novelties; but at the last they will say, The novelties were in vain. There are those who are speaking from other books than the Bible; and they are intellectual men, able men; they are persons who are capable of treating great subjects in a great manner; they have turned away from Moses and the prophets, from the minstrels and the evangelists of the Bible, and have taken up with new sensations and new manners: but "the word of the Lord abideth for ever;" it says concerning these men, "'They have forgotten me days without number;' but in some night of storm, in some stress of weather, bitten by some tremendous wolf amid the snows of the new lands they have sought, they will come back to me; and I am a forgiving book, I will open on the page on which it is written, 'Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.'"

Prayer

Almighty God, in the day of battle thou art a shield and buckler, in our great fear and in our last distress thou art as a shining light and a delivering hand; and when we come to the last river, broad and black and cold, thou dost speak to it, and the waters separate, and we pass through as on dry land. Thou hast not neglected our life either here or there; in its strongest hour thou hast taught it to pray, in its utmost weakness thou hast taught it to hope, and when the last scene of all has come, the farewell, thou hast then been near at hand to speak kind words, old gospels in new tones, reviving the heart, establishing and assuring the faith. When we were a-hungered thou didst find bread for us in unexpected places; under thy blessing flowers arise in the wilderness and great stretches of green pasture in the desert, yea, and water springs for us out of the rock, and honey is found where man never found it before. So then thou dost cover our whole life with thy care, thy Spirit provides for every want, answers every question, accompanies us through every step, nor leaves us until our weary wandering feet stand on the safe side of the river. All this knowledge comes to us in Christ, and through Christ, and for Christ's sake. This is his sweet Gospel, his delivering word, his message of emancipation, his good tidings of great joy. Enable us now to find our sufficiency in God and not in ourselves, and under all stresses, perils, and agonies of life may we hear a word behind us and round about us, and in us, coming from every quarter of heaven itself, mighty as thunder, gentle as the breeze that injures not the weakest flower, full of music, full of strength, My grace is sufficient for thee. Amen.