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Jeremiah
Chapter Twenty
Jeremiah 20
Chapter Contents
The doom of Pashur, who ill-treated the prophet. (1-6)
Jeremiah complains of hard usage. (7-13) He regrets his ever having been born.
(14-18)
Commentary on Jeremiah 20:1-6
(Read Jeremiah 20:1-6)
Pashur smote Jeremiah, and put him in the stocks. Jeremiah
was silent till God put a word into his mouth. To confirm this, Pashur has a
name given him, "Fear on every side." It speaks a man not only in
distress, but in despair; not only in danger, but in fear on every side. The
wicked are in great fear where no fear is, for God can make the most daring
sinner a terror to himself. And those who will not hear of their faults from
God's prophets, shall be made to hear them from their consciences. Miserable is
the man thus made a terror to himself. His friends shall fail him. God lets him
live miserably, that he may be a monument of Divine justice.
Commentary on Jeremiah 20:7-13
(Read Jeremiah 20:7-13)
The prophet complains of the insult and injury he
experienced. But verse 7 may be read, Thou hast persuaded me, and
I was persuaded. Thou wast stronger than I; and didst overpower me by the
influence of thy Spirit upon me. So long as we see ourselves in the way of God,
and of duty, it is weakness and folly, when we meet with difficulties and
discouragements, to wish we had never set out in it. The prophet found the
grace of God mighty in him to keep him to his business, notwithstanding the
temptation he was in to throw it up. Whatever injuries are done to us, we must
leave them to that God to whom vengeance belongs, and who has said, I will
repay. So full was he of the comfort of God's presence, the Divine protection
he was under, and the Divine promise he had to depend upon, that he stirred up
himself and others to give God the glory. Let the people of God open their
cause before Him, and he will enable them to see deliverance.
Commentary on Jeremiah 20:14-18
(Read Jeremiah 20:14-18)
When grace has the victory, it is good to be ashamed of
our folly, to admire the goodness of God, and be warned to guard our spirits
another time. See how strong the temptation was, over which the prophet got the
victory by Divine assistance! He is angry that his first breath was not his
last. While we remember that these wishes are not recorded for us to utter the
like, we may learn good lessons from them. See how much those who think they
stand, ought to take heed lest they fall, and to pray daily, Lead us not into
temptation. How frail, changeable, and sinful is man! How foolish and unnatural
are the thoughts and wishes of our hearts, when we yield to discontent! Let us
consider Him who endured the contradiction of sinners against himself, lest we
should be at any time weary and faint in our minds under our lesser trials.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Jeremiah》
Jeremiah 20
Verse 1
[1] Now
Pashur the son of Immer the priest, who was also chief governor in the house of
the LORD, heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things.
Immer —
The course of Immer was the sixteenth course of the priests, 1 Chronicles 24:14. Pashur was his son, that is
descended from him.
Verse 3
[3] And it came to pass on the morrow, that Pashur brought forth Jeremiah out
of the stocks. Then said Jeremiah unto him, The LORD hath not called thy name
Pashur, but Magormissabib.
Not called —
God's meaning was, not that he should by men be no longer called Pashur, but
that his condition should not answer that name Pashur, which signifies, a
flourishing priest; but Magor-missabib, that is, fear and terror on all sides.
Verse 7
[7] O
LORD, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: thou art stronger than I, and
hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, every one mocketh me.
Hast prevailed —
Thou prevailedst against me. Jeremiah at first excused himself to God, chap. 1:6, but the Lord prevailed against him
replying, verse 1:7, 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,
verse 1:9. This is all that is here meant, namely,
God's over-ruling him contrary to his own inclinations.
Verse 8
[8] For
since I spake, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of the
LORD was made a reproach unto me, and a derision, daily.
Since —
Since I first began to be a prophet, I have faithfully discharged my office,
and that with warmth and zeal.
Spoil — I have
prophesied that violence and spoil was coming.
Because —
Because of that scorn and derision with which they treated him.
Verse 9
[9] Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his
name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and
I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.
I said — He
did not speak this openly, but in his heart.
But — He
found in his heart a constraint to go on.
Verse 10
[10] For
I heard the defaming of many, fear on every side. Report, say they, and we will
report it. All my familiars watched for my halting, saying, Peradventure he
will be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our
revenge on him.
Prevail —
Desiring nothing more than that I might be enticed to speak or do something
which they might make matter of a colourable accusation.
Verse 11
[11] But
the LORD is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my persecutors shall
stumble, and they shall not prevail: they shall be greatly ashamed; for they
shall not prosper: their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten.
But —
The prophet recovering himself out of his fit of passion, encourageth himself
in his God, whom he calls the mighty and terrible one, so declaring his faith
in the power of God, as one able to save him, and in the promise and good will
of God toward him; therefore he saith, The Lord is with me; such was the
promise of God to this prophet, when he first undertook the prophetical office,
chap. 1:8. Be not afraid of their faces, for I am with
thee to deliver thee saith the Lord: from hence be concludes, that though he
had many that pursued after his life, yet they should stumble in their ways of
violence, and should not prevail.
Ashamed —
That they should be ashamed of what they had done, or be brought to shame for
what they had done; for prosper they should not: or they acted like fools, and
did not deal prudently for themselves (so this word is translated, Isaiah 52:13,) yea, they should become a
reproach, and their reproach should be a lasting perpetual reproach that should
not be forgotten.
Verse 14
[14]
Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me
be blessed.
Cursed —
This sudden change makes some think that these words proceeded from Jeremiah
rather as a repetition of a former passion into which the abuses of his enemies
had put him, than as the immediate product of his spirit at this time.
Verse 16
[16] And
let that man be as the cities which the LORD overthrew, and repented not: and
let him hear the cry in the morning, and the shouting at noontide;
The cities —
Sodom and Gomorrah; by the cry in the morning and shouting at noon, he means
the shouts and noises that enemies make when they break in upon a place.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Jeremiah》
20 Chapter 20
Verses 1-18
Verse 7
O Lord, Thou hast deceived me.
The arduous character of God’s service forgotten
Too often the servants of God are impatient under present crosses,
and give way to the infirmity of their old nature. Like Jeremiah, they complain
as if God had done them some wrong, and had not let them know in entering His
service what trials were before them. But it is not God who has dealt unfairly
with them, but themselves who have lost sight of the appointed conditions of
His service. The Lord never allures any to follow Him without plainly telling
them the cross that awaits them.
(Fausset.)
He deals with them as brave Garibaldi did with his recruits. When
Garibaldi was going out to battle, he told his troops what he wanted them to
do. When he had described what he wanted them to do, they said: “Well, General,
what are you going to give us for all this? “Well,” he replied, “I don’t know
what else you will get; but you will get hunger and cold, and wounds and
death.” How do you like that? (Revelation 2:10.)
The ideal and the real; or, does God deceive?
A religious man in the nineteenth century is not accustomed to
speak of God as a deceiver. And yet, once we allow for the difference of
phraseology and get behind the words, we find that the experience which
Jeremiah expressed here is one through which we ourselves have passed, and the
problem which he tries to solve is still on our hands. He had now been
preaching for several years. He had set out with all the ardour of young
enthusiasm. His was no reckless rush into the ministry. Objections and
difficulties there were, and he took account of them. But the impulse to preach
was too strong to be resisted, and the young prophet had no doubt that that
impulse was the voice of God. His obedience involved an expectation. He
expected, of course, that his work would tell; the God who called him would be
with him, and the “work of the Lord” would “prosper in his hands.” After
several years’ hard, faithful work, what does he find? A people not only
obdurate and disobedient, but revengeful and cruel. He had seen the reformation
under King Josiah, and he had seen also the terrible relapse. It grieved his
heart to see the fearful idolatrous practices restored in the Valley of Hinnom.
He went down there one day to protest against it in the name of God. While he
delivered his message he held in his hand a potter’s earthen bottle, which, at
one point in his discourse, he dashed to pieces on the ground, and assured his
hearers that so the Lord would break them and their city in pieces. The result
of this was not, as he might have hoped, the turning away of the people from
sin. On the contrary, Pashur, the chief officer in the house of the Lord,
struck Jeremiah and put him in stocks to be jeered at. Though liberated the
next day, this treatment caused the prophet seriously to reflect upon the whole
question of his mission. He looked upon that mission in the light of results,
and he confessed to a great disappointment. That is what he expresses in the
words, “Lord, Thou hast deceived me.” Results seemed to tell him to give up,
and he tried to give up. He said: “I will not make mention of Him, nor speak
any more in His name.” But what did he find? A burning fire in his heart, and
he could not forbear. Here, then, was the prophet’s dilemma. The language of
actualities to him was “stop,” but there was an imperative in his soul, and he
could not stop. Now the practical question to him was--Which of these two conflicting
voices was the voice of God? Was it the voice of history, or was it the
prophetic impulse of his heart? If the latter, then there was the hard fact for
him to face, that “the word of the Lord” made him a laughing stock, a derision,
and a reproach. Jeremiah decided for the latter, spite of the tremendous odds
against him, and preached on in the faith that God would some day vindicate his
cause. The problem which Jeremiah had to solve for himself is still with us.
There does appear to be a contradiction between the world as it is and the
world as we feel it ought to be, which is very puzzling. To many minds that
contradiction is altogether inexplicable. The so-called moral ideal is an
illusion of the mind, and if we call it the voice of God, then God deceives
men. There always have been ideals of justice and goodwill, but the real world
is all the time in dead opposition to them. Now, which of these expresses the
will of God? Is it the world of fact, or the world of aspiration? Is it in our
sight of what is, or in our hope of what may be? Shall we learn His character
from what He has actually done, or from an ideal which He has always promised
but never realised? Does God deceive men? Reformers die with their holms
unfulfilled; lives have been given to the cause of righteousness, and yet might
remains right, and the tyrant prevails. Do our ideals simply mock us? If these
are the voice of God, why do they not prevail? Is God defeated? What shall we
say? Let us not try to escape the difficulty by denying it. We may purchase a
cheap optimism by blinking the ugly facts of the world. Let us admit to the
full that the history of moral reform has its sore disappointments. The world
has not only opposed the reformer, but it has always put him in stocks. It
changes the kind of stocks as time goes on, but they are stocks all the same.
Official religion and real religion are often engaged in deadly conflict, a
conflict which frequently results to the reformer, as to Jeremiah, in a sore
sense of disappointment. And every man who seeks to do good soon comes upon
many discouraging facts. There are times when he says: “I have laboured in
vain, and spent my strength for nought.” Nor is it by ignoring such and similar
facts, and dwelling only on the bright side, that we have to support
faith. On the other hand, we must beware of the temperament which ever occupies
itself with life’s disappointments, and fails to see its progress and success.
Now, I admit that if there were that complete breach between the real and ideal
which appears to be, the problem would be utterly insoluble. But it is not so.
In the first place, it is not correct to speak of the world of fact and the
world of aspiration as separate and distinct, for the aspiration is one of the
facts. It is a part of that unto which it aspires. The aspiration after
goodness is itself good, and all prayer for spiritual excellence is part of its
own answer. There is no clear line between the ideal and the real, for the
ideal is a part of man as he is, and he is a part of the world as it is. When
we ask whether we shall learn God’s character from that which He has
accomplished in the world, or from the ideal which stirs the soul, we forget
that that soul with its ideal is a part of what He has done. Man, with his
sense of duty, with all his yearnings for purer and diviner being, is a part of
the world as it is; the ideal is partly actual; prophecy is history at its
highest range. If only one man desired that society should be righteous and
pure, society could not be judged without that man. The power of an ideal may
culminate in a great person, find in him an exceptionally brilliant expression,
and reach the point at which it commands the world; but he is always a sharer
in the conditions he condemns, and the men he condemns have helped to make him
what he is. He may be as different from the average society as the blossom is
from the stem on which it grows, but that society conditions him as the stem
conditions the blossom. This is the fact which the prophet is liable to forget.
It was as true of Jeremiah as of Thomas Carlyle, that he made the blackness
blacker than it was. Jeremiah was not as lonely as he himself thought he was.
If that nation had been utterly faithless, such faith as his could not have
been born in it. So, though the prophet must condemn the actual, because he is
swayed by the ideal, and is a divinely discontented man, working for progress,
yet his very existence proves that that progress has already been the order of
God, and has produced him. That there is a contradiction between what is and
what ought to be is true, but it is not the whole truth. Strictly speaking,
nothing is, but everything is becoming. We are in the process of a Divine
evolution in which the ideal is forever actualising itself. The contradiction
is not ultimate, nor the breach complete. What cannot we hope, for instance, of
a race that counts one Jesus among its members? He is, then, an example of what
we may become, and our representative before God. In like manner, surely, when
God judges the human race, He does not judge it with its best specimens left
out; He takes its highest points into consideration. He does with the race what
you and I do with the individual--takes its best as its real self, as that to
which it shall one day fully attain. And when we think that Jesus, and all that
He was, is a part of the actual history of the world, then we say that the
richest ideals that ever sway our souls are justified by the history of our
race--God is not deceiving us. Let us try to remember this when we come to
bitter disappointments in life’s work. When the prophet finds, as find he will,
that multitudes do not listen, but mock and deride, let him nevertheless be
sure that the good and the true must prevail. Some disappointments are
inevitable. It is of the very nature of an ideal to make life unsatisfactory; a
spirit so possessed can never rest in what is, but will forever press forward
to that which is before. To be content with all things as they are is to
obliterate the distinction between good and bad, between right and wrong. No
high-souled man will settle matters so. But some of our bitterest
disappointments come from the fact that the form in which the ideal shapes
itself in our mind is necessarily defective, and that our scheme of work is consequently
partial and one-sided. This was a constant source of trouble to the prophets of
Israel. We get many of our disappointments in a similar way. Here are two men,
for instance, whose souls are stirred by the ideal of a renovated world in
which righteousness and love shall reign. Each think of bringing it about
chiefly in one particular way, the former, perhaps by some scheme of social
reform, the latter by a certain type of gospel preaching. Both will be very
disappointed; the world will not come round to them as they wish. And yet while
these two men are groaning under their disappointments, the fact is that the
world is all the time advancing, though not in their way. The man who thinks
that his particular gospel is the only thing that can possibly save the world
finds the world very indifferent to that gospel, and thinks that it is going to
perdition, while all the time it is going onward and upward to higher and
better things. But the truth is, that the world’s progress is far too great to
be squeezed into any one creed, or scheme, or ordinance, and you cannot measure
it by any of these. Attempt that, and while you bemoan your discouragements and
think ill of the world, humanity will sweep onward, receiving its marching
orders from the throne of the universe. For practical purposes we must confine
our energies chiefly to one or two ways of doing good, but if we only remember
that when we have selected our way it is but a small fragment of what has to be
done, that other ways and methods are quite as necessary, we shall save
ourselves from much personal trouble, and from much ill-judgment of others. But
even when we have done our best, there will still be some adverse results.
These must not dishearten us. If there be in our heart “as it were a burning fire,”
and we become weary of silence and cannot contain, then let the fiery speech
flow, however cold the world. We must obey the highest necessities of our
nature. Our best impulses and purest desires are the word of God to us, which
we have to preach. With this conviction we can go on with our work,
disappointments notwithstanding. Nothing is more evident in reviewing history
than the continuity of Divine purpose. It is the unfolding of a plan. It is
full enough of evil and of sorrow, and yet “out of evil cometh good,” and “joy
is born of sorrow.” It is full enough of error, and yet, somehow, even error
has been used to preserve truth. Out of mistakes and superstitions have come
some of the greatest truths. The greatest tragedy of history was the crucifixion
of Jesus, yet Calvary has become the mount of our highest ascensions, and the
altar of our best thanksgivings. So often, indeed, has the best come out of the
worst, so often has the morning broken when the night was darkest, so often has
peace come through war, that no discouragements of today shall weaken our
faith, or bedim our hope, or mar the splendour of our expectation. We believe
in God. There are dark places in history, tunnels through which we are not able
to follow the train of the Divine purpose, but we saw it first on the one side,
and then on the other, and conclude it must have gone through--the tunnel, too,
was on the line of progress. The history of the world is an upward history. And
those who know God are ever looking up; men with a Divine outlook are ever on
the march. And, friends, whatever you do, cling to the ideal. Let no
discouragement release your hold. Be active and practical; yes, but do not be
bound within the limits of any one scheme. Climb the mount of vision, and have
converse with God, and you will carry down with you a faith that can stand any
disappointment, and hold itself erect amid the rush of the maddest torrent. (T.
R. Williams.)
Verse 9
Then I said, I will not make mention of Him nor speak any more in
His name.
Jeremiah discouraged
I. Jeremiah’s
momentary rashness. Oh! it was a rash speech--like the rashness of Job, like
the petulance of Jonah. It is useful for us to have set before us the failings
of the most distinguished of God’s people. We learn from these failings, that
after all they were mere men, and “men of like passions with ourselves,” that
they were encompassed with the same infirmity, that they carried about with them
the same weakness, and that therefore the same grace which was triumphant in
them in the result can be equally triumphant in our support and in our ultimate
victory.
II. His many and
great discouragements.
1. They arose partly from the very nature of his message. His was not
a pleasing burden. The message of God’s Word is a message of wrath as well as
of mercy; there are denunciations in it as well as promises. And we must be as
faithful and as earnest in the delivery of the one as we are in the delivery of
the other.
2. The unbelief and opposition which that message experienced.
3. Nor were the hearers of Jeremiah satisfied with the discouragement
that would be occasioned by their opposition to and unbelief of the message of
the prophet; they added to this bitter reproach, misrepresentation and
persecution. What though earth meets us with its opposition? What though
calumnies are flung against the cause in which we are engaged? We are not
looking for earthly honours; we are not seeking the gratitude and encomiums of
the world. Our record is with God; our reward is on high. We appeal to His
judgment seat; we labour as in His sight.
III. The
perseverance, by which the course of the prophet was marked, notwithstanding
all. Mark, then, it was only a momentary fit of despondency. They are the
moments of God’s people, that are the seasons of their giving way; it is not
the characteristic of their entire life. Though they may now and then say, “I
will not make mention of Him nor speak any more in His name,” follow them a
little--they are at it again, and again, and again; and on to a dying hour, and
with their dying breath, that name is on their lips; and when the tongue is
silent, it is still engraven on the heart. (W. H. Cooper.)
Pulpit experience
I. The power of the
outward to induce a godly minister to discontinue his work. I will state a few
of the things which often induce this depressing state of mind
1. The momentous influences that must spring from our labours. In
every sentence we touch cords that shall send their vibrations through the
endless future; that shall peal in the thunders of a guilty conscience, or
resound in the music of a purified spirit.
2. The incessant draw upon the vital energies of our being. To preach
is to teach as well as to exhort and warn; and to teach the Bible requires a
knowledge of the Bible, and to know the Bible requires the most earnest,
continued, and indefatigable investigation. Physical labour tires some limb,
but this labour tires the soul itself; and when the soul is tired, the man
himself is tired.
3. The seeming ineffectiveness of his labours.
4. The inconsistent conduct of those who profess to believe the
truth.
II. The stronger
power of the inward to induce a godly minister to persevere in his work. Look
at this inner force; it is like a “fire.” Fire! What a purifying, expanding
power! it turns everything to its own nature. So it is with the Word of God.
This fire was shut up in the bones of the prophet; it became an irrepressible
force. The thoughts that passed his mind about resigning, feel as fuel to
increase its force. If a man has God’s truth really in him, he must speak it
out.
1. This word kindled within him the all-impelling “fire” of
philanthropy. Many waters cannot quench love. All the waters of ministerial
annoyance, disappointment, anxieties, and labour, shall not quench this “fire,”
if the Word of God is “shut up in his bones.”
2. This word kindled within him the all-impelling “fire” of piety. It
filled him with love to God. David felt this “fire” when he said, “I beheld the
transgressors, and was grieved.” Paul felt this “fire” at Athens, when he “felt
his spirit stirred within him.”
3. This word kindled within him the all-impelling “fire of hope.” The
Word of God kindles within us a fire that lights up the future world, and makes
us feel that what we are doing, however humble, is great, because it is for
eternity.
4. This word kindled within him the strong “fire” of duty. “It is
giving in trust,” etc. “I am a debtor,” says Paul. (Homilist.)
The soul under discouragement
I. The effects of
discouragement as a pious soul.
1. In our labours for the good of others.
2. In our exertions for our own souls. Such apprehension is most
enervating.
II. The effect of
piety on a discouraged soul.
1. To shame querulous impatience.
2. To resuscitate drooping energies.
Conclusion:
1. Expect discouragements in every part of your duty.
2. Make them occasions for glorifying God the more. (C. Simeon, M.
A.)
Ministers, their discouragements and supports
I. Ministerial
discouragements distressingly felt.
1. Here is a rash resolution formed.
2. An insuperable obstacle presented to his meditated abandonment of
his work.
II. Popular
detraction sensitively deplored.
1. Explain the nature of popular detraction.
2. Adduce Scripture precepts respecting the evil of popular
detraction.
3. Exhibit Scripture examples of individuals who have felt the
scorpion’s sting of popular detraction.
4. Analyse more particularly the ease of the prophet as exhibited in
the text.
III. Divine support
happily realised.
1. From a sense of the presence and power of God.
2. Expectation of the future failure and confusion of his opposers.
3. From a belief of the omniscience of God.
4. From the efficacy of prayer.
Learn--
The burning fire
We have sometimes seen a little steamer, like The Maid of the
Mist at the foot of the Falls of Niagara, resisting and gaining upon a
stormy torrent, madly rushing past her. Slowly she has worked her way through
the mad rush of waters, defying their attempt to bear her back, calmly and serenely
pursuing her onward course, without being turned aside, or driven back, or
dismayed. And why? Because a burning fire is shut up in her heart, and her
engines cannot stay, because impelled in their strong and regular motion.
Similarly, within Jeremiah’s heart a fire had been lit from the heart of God,
and was kept aflame by the continual fuel heaped on it. The difficulty,
therefore, with him was, not in speaking, but in keeping silent--not in acting,
but in refraining. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
A heart on fire
But, after all, our main desire is to know how we may have this
heart on fire. We are tired of a cold heart toward God. We complain because of
our sense of effort in Christian life and duty; we would fain learn the secret
of being so possessed by the Spirit and thought of God that we might be daunted
by no opposition, abashed by no fear. The source of the inward fire is the love
of God, shed abroad by the Holy Ghost; not primarily our love to God, but our
sense of His love to us. The coals of juniper that gave so fierce a heat to the
heart of a Rutherford were brought from the altar of the heart of God. If we
set ourselves with open face towards the Cross, which, like a burning lens,
focuses the love of God, and if, at the same time, we reckon upon the Holy
Spirit--well called the Spirit of Burning--to do His wonted office, we shall
find the ice that cakes the surface of our heart dissolving in tears of
penitence; and presently the sacred fire will begin to glow. When that love has
once begun to burn within the soul, when once the baptism of fire has set us
aglow, the sins and sorrows of men--their impieties and blasphemies, their
disregard of God, of His service and of His day, their blind courting of
danger, their dalliance with evil, will only incite in us a more ardent spirit.
(F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
An my familiars watched for my halting.
Pathetic experiences
In these verses we have two distinct aspects of human experience.
Within this brief section Jeremiah is on the hill top and in the deepest valley
of spiritual dejection. How much depends upon circumstances for man’s estimate
of life! That estimate varies with climate, with incidents of a very trivial
nature, and with much that is only superficial and transitory. Life is one
thing to the successful man, and another to the man whose life is one continual
series of defeats and disappointments. It is well, therefore, that all men
should have a touch of failure, and spend a night or two now and then in
deepest darkness that cannot be relieved: such experience teaches sympathy,
develops the noblest faculties, brings into beneficent, exercise many generous
emotions, and in the morning, after a long night’s struggle with doubt, there
may be tears in the eyes; but those tears denote the end of weakness and the
beginning of strength. The year is not one season, but four, and we must pass
through all the four before we can know what the year is. So with life: we must
be with Jeremiah on the mountaintop, or with him in the deep valley; we must
join his song, and fall into the solemn utterance of his sorrow, before we can
know what the whole gamut of life is. How impossible it is to realise all the
conflicting experiences at once, and to be wise. There is an abundance of
information, there is a plentifulness of criticism that is detestable; but
wisdom--large, generous wisdom, that understands every man’s case, and has an
answer to every man’s necessity--oh, whither has that angel-mother fled? We
need now and again to come into contact with those who know us altogether, and
who can speak the word of cheer when we are cheerless, and the word of
chastening when our rapture becomes riotous. Consider the vanity of life, and
by its vanity understand its brevity, its uncertainty, its fickleness. We have
no gift of time, we have no assurance of continuance; we have a thousand
yesterdays, we have not one tomorrow. Then how things disappoint us that were
going to make us glad! The flowers have been blighted, or the insects have
fallen upon them, or the cold wind has chilled them, and they have never come
to full fruition or bloom or beauty; and the child that was going to comfort us
in our old age died first, as if frightened by some ghost invisible to us. Then
the collisions of life, its continual competitions and rivalries and
jealousies; its mutual criticisms, its backbitings and slanderings; its
censures, deserved and undeserved: who can stand the rush and tumult of this life?
Who has not sometimes longed to lay it down and begin some better, sunnier
state of existence? And the sufferings of life, who shall number them?--not the
great sufferings that are published, not the great woes that draw the attention
even of the whole household to us in tender regard; but sufferings we never
mention, spiritual sufferings, yea, even physical sufferings; sufferings that
we dare not mention, sufferings that would be laughed at by unsympathetic
contempt--but still sufferings. Add all these elements and possibilities
together, and then say who has not sometimes been almost anxious to “shuffle
off this mortal coil,” and pass into the liberty of rest. Jesus Christ
understands us all. We can all tell Jesus, as the disciples did, what has happened.
He can listen to each of us as if His interest were entranced and enthralled.
He knows every quiver of the life, every throb of the heart, every palpitation
of fear, and every shout of joy. Withhold nothing from Him. You can tell Him
all, and when you have ended you will find that you may begin life again. In
your hope is His answer. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Evil watchers
“All my familiars watched for my halting”: the original word does
not mean my innermost friends, for true friendship can never be guilty of such
treason, but the Hebrew word means, The men of my peace; the men who used to
accost me on the highway with, “Is it peace?”--the men who salaamed me out of
civility, but who never really cared for me in their souls: these men, behind
their painted masks, watched for my halting; they all watched. Some men take
pleasure when other men fall. What is the answer to all this watching of
others? It is a clear, plain, simple, useful answer: Watch yourselves; be
sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth
about seeking whom he may devour. It is not enough that others watch you--watch
yourselves; be critical about yourselves; be severe with yourselves; penetrate
the motive of every action, and say, Is it healthy? Is it honest? Is it such as
could bear the criticism of God? Dare we take up this motive and look at it
when the sun burns upon it in its revealing glory? If a man so watch himself he
need not mind who else watches him. Watch the secret places; watch the
out-of-the-way doors, the postern gates, the places that are supposed to be
secure against the approach of the burglar; be very careful about all these,
and then the result may be left with God. He who does not watch will be worsted
in the fray. He who does not watch cannot pray. He who watches others and does
not watch himself is a fool. (J. Parker, D. D.)
But the Lord is with me as
a mighty terrible one.--
The best Champion
(as a mighty terrible one):--As a strong giant, and mine only
Champion on whom I lean. Here the spirit begins to get the better of the flesh,
could Jeremiah but hold his own. But as the ferryman plies the oar, and eyes
the shore homeward where he would be, yet there comes a gust of wind that
carrieth him back again; so it fared with our prophet (verses 14, 15). (John
Trapp.)
Cursed be the day wherein
I was born.
Existence regretted
Job and Jeremiah were alike in wishing they had never been born.
They were both men of sorrow.
I. A preference
alike irreligious and irrational.
1. Good men should not for a moment think that non-existence is
preferable to life and being. These were both good men, children of God;
existence was therefore a blessing to be prized, not an evil to be mourned
over. Had they been versed in the design and results of Divine dispensations,
as Paul, they would have said, “Our light affliction,” etc. With such a destiny
before them, instead of cursing the day of birth, they would have blessed it as
the dawn of an eternal existence, to be hereafter crowned with a glory that
fadeth not away.
2. Ungodly men may with some degree of reason prefer non-existence;
because in trouble they have no Divine support, in death no good hope, in
eternity no expectation but the penalty of sin.
II. Non-existence
is preferable to existence unless existence possess more pleasure than pain.
1. If every ungodly man lived out threescore years and ten, and the
whole was spent in pleasure, yet, as that period is but momentary as compared
with his eternal existence, and as that existence is to be one of pain, he
might curse the day of his birth.
2. Existence, eternal existence, is a blessing to all unfallen ones,
and also to such fallen ones as are redeemed by the death of Christ.
3. But perpetuity of existence can be no blessing to “the angels who
kept not their first estate,” nor to those of the human race who by impenitence
and unbelief reject the great salvation and bring upon themselves the double
condemnation of the law and the Gospel.
III. Hell and heaven
are two great teachers.
1. Hell teaches--the folly of wickedness, the full enormity of sin in
the penalty it has entailed, and leads all its victims amid the consequences of
their depravity to curse the day they were born.
2. Heaven teaches--the wisdom of holiness, the full benefits of
redemption in the felicity it has secured, and leads all the ransomed to bless
the day of their birth as the morn of their noontide of glory.
IV. God is not
willing that any should have occasion for preferring non-existence.
1. He has devised and carried out a costly plan by which the
existence of fallen ones might be made an eternal blessing.
2. Every man who now wishes for a glorious existence has only to look
to Jesus and be saved. (D. Pledge.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》