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Jeremiah
Chapter Fifty-two
Jeremiah 52
Chapter Contents
The fate of Zedekiah. (1-11) The destruction of
Jerusalem. (12-23) The captivities. (24-30) The advancement of Jehoiachin.
(31-34)
Commentary on Jeremiah 52:1-11
(Read Jeremiah 52:1-11)
This fruit of sin we should pray against above any thing;
Cast me not away from thy presence, Psalm 51:11. None are cast out of God's presence
but those who by sin have first thrown themselves out. Zedekiah's flight was in
vain, for there is no escaping the judgments of God; they come upon the sinner,
and overtake him, let him flee where he will.
Commentary on Jeremiah 52:12-23
(Read Jeremiah 52:12-23)
The Chaldean army made woful havoc. But nothing is so
particularly related here, as the carrying away of the articles in the temple.
The remembrance of their beauty and value shows us the more the evil of sin.
Commentary on Jeremiah 52:24-30
(Read Jeremiah 52:24-30)
The leaders of the Jews caused them to err; but now they
are, in particular, made monuments of Divine justice. Here is an account of two
earlier captivities. This people often were wonders both of judgment and mercy.
Commentary on Jeremiah 52:31-34
(Read Jeremiah 52:31-34)
See this history of king Jehoiachin in 2 Kings 25:27-30. Those under oppression will
find it is not in vain for them to hope and quietly to wait for the salvation
of the Lord. Our times are in God's hand, for the hearts of all we have to deal
with are so. May we be enabled, more and more, to rest on the Rock of Ages, and
to look forward with holy faith to that hour, when the Lord will bring again
Zion, and overthrow all the enemies of the church.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Jeremiah》
Jeremiah 52
Verse 2
[2] And
he did that which was evil in the eyes of the LORD, according to all that
Jehoiakim had done.
Zedekiah — It
is generally thought that this chapter was not penned by Jeremiah, who, it is
not probable, would have so largely repeated what he had related before; and
could not historically relate what happened after his time, as some things did
which are mentioned towards the end of the chapter. Probably it was penned by
some of those in Babylon, and put in here as a preface to the book of
Lamentations.
Verse 24
[24] And the captain of the guard took Seraiah the chief priest, and Zephaniah
the second priest, and the three keepers of the door:
Three — It
is probable there were more keepers of the door, but the captain of the guard
took only three of the chief.
Verse 30
[30] In
the three and twentieth year of Nebuchadrezzar Nebuzaradan the captain of the
guard carried away captive of the Jews seven hundred forty and five persons:
all the persons were four thousand and six hundred.
All the persons were four thousand and six
hundred — How amazingly were the Jews diminished,
that this handful was all who were carried captive!
Verse 34
[34] And
for his diet, there was a continual diet given him of the king of Babylon,
every day a portion until the day of his death, all the days of his life.
All the days of his life — Here ends the history of the kingdom of Judah. I shall only observe the
severe judgment of God upon this people, whose kingdom was made up of the two
tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and half the tribe of Manasseh. In the numbering
of the persons belonging to these two tribes, Numbers 1:27,35,37, (counting half of the number
of the tribe of Manasseh) we find one hundred twenty-six thousand one hundred: Numbers 26:22,34,41, we find of them one hundred
forty-eight thousand four hundred and fifty. Here, verse 52:30, we find no more of them carried into
captivity, than four thousand and six hundred. From whence we may judge what a
multitude of them were slain by the sword, by the famine, and pestilence! It is
a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, to mock his
messengers, despise his words, and misuse his prophets, 'till there be no
remedy, 2 Chronicles 36:16.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Jeremiah》
52 Chapter 52
Verses 1-34
Verse 11
He put out the eyes of Zedekiah.
Zedekiah the prisoner
Here is no mystery.
A wicked man, unfaithful to a very sacred trust, ending his days in darkness
and a prison (Psalms 37:35). The son of the good
Josiah, whose name suggests thoughts of early piety and godly patriotism,
degenerate, idolatrous, and in the end eyeless and captive, pining away years
of monotonous misery in a Babylonish dungeon--it is all according to that law
which God has stamped on the world, “Your sin will find you out.” It has been
said of him that he was a man “not so much bad at heart as weak in will.” “He
was one of those unfortunate characters,” it has been said, “frequent in
history, like our own Charles I. and Louis XVI. of France, who find themselves
at the head of affairs during a great crisis, without having the strength of
character to enable them to do what they know to be right, and whose infirmity
becomes moral guilt.” That he was weak in will and purpose we see in the manner
in which he surrendered Jeremiah to the princes who sought his life (Jeremiah 38:3). But he was “bad at heart”
likewise. His heart was not right towards the Lord God of his father--self and
the world and idols were the objects of his affection, and after them he would
go. Warning succeeded warning in vain. For eleven years the struggle lasted
between this wicked prince and the voice which came to him from the God of
heaven. And the Jerusalem of his day may be described as the Sodom of an earlier
day--
Long warned, long spared, till her whole heart was foul,
And fiery vengeance on its clouds came nigh.
Vengeance came in another form than that in which it fell on those
cities over whose ashes the waves of the Dead Sea now roll, and yet scarcely
less terrible. The Babylonian siege lasted sixteen months (53:4), and the
miseries of Jerusalem were only less than those endured in the siege by the
Roman Titus, seven centuries after. The calamities which befell the royal
family are recorded with an undisguised bluntness (verses8-11). What a
catalogue of horrors! But all in keeping with the character of the people. They
had been described to the very life at an earlier stage of the ministry of
Jeremiah (Jeremiah 6:22-23). This witness is true.
The very stones, stones carved with their own hands, have been disinterred from
the grave of ages, to bear testimony to the truth of the histories and
prophecies of the Bible. Instead of being ashamed of the barbarities in which
they indulged, the Assyrians (and in this we need make no distinction between
the Assyrians and the Chaldeans) gloried in them, and employed the arts of
sculpture and painting to perpetuate the memory of their cruel deeds. On the
relics of their civilisation, now exhibited in our own museums and places of
public resort, we find cities which have surrendered represented as given up to
indiscriminate slaughter and the flames. The kings themselves took part in
perpetrating the cruelties which are brought to light by recently discovered
sculptures. On one of these sculptures a king is represented as thrusting out
the eyes of a kneeling captive with his own spear, and holding with his own
hand the cord which is inserted into the lips and nostrils of this and two
other prisoners. The spirit which possessed the Assyrians and Babylonians may
be traced through later ages in the same lands. One of the best of the Roman
emperors, Valerian, was taken prisoner in battle in the third century by a
Persian king, who detained him in hopeless bondage, and paraded him in chains,
invested with the imperial purple, as a constant spectacle of fallen greatness,
to the multitude. Whenever the proud conqueror mounted his horse, he placed his
foot upon the neck of the Roman emperor “Nor was this all for when Valerian
sank under the weight of his shame and grief, his corpse was flayed, and the
skin, stuffed with straw, was preserved for ages in the most celebrated temple
of Persia.” Would that such things as these could he told only of Eastern
lands! But Western story is full of them likewise. The conflicts of the Moors
and so-called Christians in Spain, from the eighth century, the age of Moorish
conquest, to the sixteenth, the age of their final expulsion from Europe,
contains histories of cruelty, perhaps, to be rivalled nowhere else--cruelty in
which the so-called Christian luxuriated as much as his Moslem enemy. This
spirit attained its highest point of intensity and barbarity in the same land in
the Inquisition, strangely called the Holy Office, by which sheer torture was
invoked to root out Judaism, and every form and shade of Christianity except
that of the Roman Church. The appliances of rude barbarians, like American
Indians, and of civilised barbarians, like Assyrians and Chaldeans, are not to
compare with the appliances which the Inquisition perfected through its ages of
murder. But to return to the Babylonish cruelties on the person and family of
the Hebrew king. “The King
of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes.” How many or how old they were, we are
not told. The father being now only two-and-thirty years old, his sons must
have been boys. And ungodly as the father was, there is no sign in his life of
any want of natural affection, while there is sign of his sensibility to the
sufferings of others. To put his sons to death before his eyes was an act of
wanton cruelty, designed to give him the utmost possible pain. Then were put to
death the princes of Judah, who must now recall with bitterness, if not with
repentance, their long and obstinate resistance to the Divine counsels, and
their own hard-hearted attempt on the life of the prophet Jeremiah. His sons
dead, and the princes dead, the king himself must now submit to the cruel
sentence of his conqueror--a sentence more barbarous than death itself. His
eyes were put out. The process is revealed to us in a bas-relief, to which I
have already referred, in which the conquering king is digging out the eyes of
the conquered king with a spear. The King of Babylon may have done this with
his own hands to the King of Judah, or by the hands of another. In either ease
the conquered had no alternative but to submit. And thus blinded he is carried
to the prison on the banks of the Euphrates in which he must end his days. Two
predictions were thus fulfilled--one by Jeremiah 32:5, addressed to the king m
person, and one by Ezekiel 12:13, who was with the
captives which had been carried to Babylon some years before. The Word of the
Lord was not broken. The King of Judah saw the King of Babylon’s eyes with his
eyes, but it was the last vision which his eyes saw. The city of Babylon he saw
not, though he was doomed to be imprisoned in it and to die there. When
Zedekiah reached Babylon, there was already a King of Judah imprisoned there.
His nephew, the son of his elder brother Jehoiakim, had been dethroned, as we
have seen, after a brief reign of three months and ten days, and had been
carried into exile with many of his princes and subjects (Jeremiah 29:1-32.). That he was still alive
when his uncle and successor, blind and childless, arrived in the city of their
enemy, we know--for the last sentences of the Book of Jeremiah tell us what
befell him many years later. One wonders whether the two dethroned Kings of
Judah, uncle and nephew, ever met in the land of their imprisonment, and had
opportunity of talking over the events which had involved them in so great a
disaster. If they had, did they curse the God of their fathers, or did they
learn, as some of these fathers had done in the day of their adversity, to
humble themselves and seek forgiveness? Their great predecessor, Solomon, in
dedicating the temple which Babylon had now ]aid waste, had prayed (1 Kings 8:46-50). Imagine Jehoiakim
reading these words out of the book of the law to his blind uncle Zedekiah.
Imagine them recalling the history of the great-grandfather of the elder of
them--how Manasseh had done evil exceedingly; how the King of ‘Assyria had
bound him with fetters and carried him to Babylon; and how, when he was in
affliction, he besought the Lord (2 Chronicles 33:12). Thus encouraged
to repent and seek forgiveness, the royal prisoners may have bent the knee
together before the throne of the heavenly grace, and pied the promises which
had been given so often to the penitent. And if they presented thus the
sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart in their prison-house, we know that
mercy was not withheld. We find one little word which encourages hope. “There
shall he be till I visit him, saith the Lord” (32:5). God visits men with
judgment; but this He had done to Zedekiah before he reached his prison in
Babylon. God visits men with favour, with compassion, with restoring mercy: was
it thus He said He should visit Zedekiah in Babylon I doubt not that the words
“until I visit him” were meant to be indefinite and obscure, but were meant at
the same time to give assurance to the king that in Babylon he should not be
beyond the reach of God, whether for good or evil. “Am I a God at hand, saith
the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide in secret places, that I shall
not see him, saith the Lord?” (Jeremiah 23:23-24.) Jehovah was a God at
hand in Jerusalem, but equally a God in Babylon afar off. The throne of Judah
was exposed to His eye, but equally so the most secret place in the Babylonish
prison. And God would visit Zedekiah in his exile and prison. This assurance
might be a terror or a joy. If the king hoped that, being in Babylon, he was
now away from the presence of Jehovah and under the rule of other gods, and had
nothing more to fear, let him know that Jehovah should visit him even there. If
he feared that, being in Babylon, he should be beyond the reach of the mercy of
the God of his fathers, let him know, to his heart’s joy, that Jehovah should
visit him even in that far-off land. (J. Kennedy, D. D.)
Verses 31-34
Lifted up the head of Jehoiachin.
Jehoiachin’s change of fortune
What changes may occur in life: who can tell what we may come to?
After thirty-seven years there arose a king who took a fancy to Jehoiachin, and
made quite a favourite of him in the court. Good fortune is often tardy in
coming to men; we are impatient, we want to be taken out of prison to-day, and
set among kings at once, and to have all our desires gratified fully, and
especially at once. See what has befallen Jehoiachin. For the first time for
seven-and-thirty years the man of authority has spoken kindly to him. Kind
words have different values at different times; sometimes a kind word would be
a fortune--if not a fortune in the hand, a fortune in the way of stimulating
imagination, comforting disconsolateness, and so pointing to the sky that we
could see only its real blue beauties, its glints of light, its hints of coming
day. When we have an abundant table, what do we care for an offered crust? that
crust may be regarded by our sated appetite as an insult: but when the table is
bare, and hunger is gnawing, and thirst is consuming, what then is a crust of
bread, or a draught of water? More men hunger for kind words than for bread.
There is a hunger of the heart. Here is an office we can all exercise. Where we
cannot give much that is described as substantial we can speak kindly, we can
look benignantly, we can conduct ourselves as if we would relieve the burden if
we could: thus life would be multiplied, brightened, sweetened, a great
comforting sense of Divine nearness would fall upon our whole consciousness,
and we should enter into the possession and the mystery of heavenly peace. See
what fortune has befallen Jehoiachin! After thirty-seven years he is recognised
as king and gentleman and friend, and has kind words spoken to him in a kind of
domestic music. Was not all this worth living for? What have we been doing in
thus dwelling upon the good fortune of Jehoiachin? We have been playing the
fool. We have been reckoning up social precedences, better clothes, and
abundance of food; and we have been adding up how much the man must have worn
and eaten and drunken within the twenty-four hours, and all the while the king
looking at him benignantly, speaking to him as an equal, dealing out to him
kind words,--the whole constituting an ineffable insult. Yet how prone we are
to add up circumstances, and to speak of social relations as if they
constituted the sum-total of life. Now look at realities. Jehoiachin was in his
heart a bad man. That is written upon the face of the history of the kings of
Judah, and not a single word is said about his change of heart; and bad men
cannot have good fortune. He has been taken out of prison in the narrow sense
of the term, his head has been lifted up, a place of precedence has been
accorded him at the royal table, and his bread and water have been made sure
for the rest of his days: what a delightful situation! No. Jehoiachin at his
best was only a decorated captive; he was still in Babylon. That is the sting.
Not what have we, but where are we, is heaven’s piercing inquiry. Not how great
the barns; state the height, the width, the depth, the cubic measure of the
barns; but, What wheat have we in the heart, what bread in the soul, what
love-wine for the spirit’s drinking? (J. Parker, D. D.)
A captor’s magnanimity and generous dealing
At the battle of Poitiers the Black Prince defeats and captures the
French King John II. That night the Prince of Wales (the Black Prince) made a
supper in his lodging for the French king and to the great lords that were
prisoners. “And always the prince served before the king, as humbly as he
could, and would not sit at the king’s board, for any desire that the king
could make, and exhorted him not to be of heavy cheer, for that King Edward,
his father, should bear him all honour and amity, and accord with him so
reasonably that they should be friends ever after.”. . . This scene, so
gracefully performed by him who, a few hours before, was “courageous and cruel
as a lion,” was in perfect accordance with the system of chivalry. (Knight’s
England.)
And spake kindly unto him.--
Kindness
To be kind is “to be disposed to do good to others, and to make
them happy”; and kindness is “that temper or disposition which delights in
contributing to the happiness of others.”
I. Much depends on
our spirit and disposition--well-nigh everything; for a kindly spirit or
disposition will always be finding ways of showing itself.
II. Be kind in your
thoughts one to another. To have pure streams you must have a pure fountain;
and if we think unkindly of people, we shall not be likely to speak or act
kindly towards them. Some people rob their own hearts of peace and sweetness,
and destroy in themselves all nobility of character, because they have got into
the sad, sinful habit of always looking for the faults and failings of others,
and attributing to them wrong motives.
III. Be kind in your
speech one to another. Words are little things and soon spoken, but they carry
much with them. They have power to give great joy or bitter sorrow; they may
nestle in the heart a very benediction, cherished to the dying day as an
inspiration to all that is good; or they may rankle in the breast, fostering a
bitterness which goes down to the grave. “Kind words can never die.”
IV. Do kind acts
one to another. Every day brings opportunities. Keep a look-out for them. (R.
M. Spoor.)
Every day a portion.
The daily portion
If the King of Babylon did thus for a captive king, his prisoner,
will your Heavenly Father do less for you? He created you to need the daily
portion, and cannot be oblivious of His own constitution of your nature. You
wind up your watch each day, because you know that otherwise it will stop; and
God win not be less thoughtful of your constant need of reinforcement. His
faithfulness guarantees that there always will be the portion of good for the
body; always the portion of love and light for the soul; always the portion of
Holy Spirit quickening ,for the spirit. It is easier to die once than to live
always. It is not easy to meets the continual demand of recurrent duty; not
easy to live a full and strong life, that never dips below the horizon, or sinks
in the fountain-basin. But it is possible, when the soul has learnt to leave
all care with God, waiting on Him for the supply of all its needs, and
esteeming that He is the only really satisfactory portion we need. “Neither
prison walls, nor locks, nor the cruelty of man,” said some imprisoned
suffering soul, “can obstruct the issues of the Lord’s love nor the
manifestation of His presence, which is our joy and comfort, and carries us
above all sufferings, and makes days and hours and years pleasant to us; which
pass away as a moment, because of the enjoyment of seeing Him with whom a
thousand years is but as one day.” Those who can trust God in these directions
are not only abundantly satisfied of His great goodness, but are able to send
portions to others. Like the disciples, they share out their slender supplies
and get twelve baskets full in return. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
All the days of his life.--
A good income for life
This paragraph describes the providential dealings of the Lord
with Jehoiachin by the instrumentality of Evil-merodach, the son of
Nebuchadnezzar, who was then King of Babylon; yet the successive items of those
dealings are so expressive that they seem almost to force themselves upon the
mind in a spiritual form, and therefore I shall accommodate those items to
spiritual things.
I. The dealings of
the Lord as here set before us, with Jehoiachin, king, as he should have been,
of Judah, but for thirty-seven years a captive. Now, however, the time came for
him to be released. First, then, “Evil-merodach, King of Babylon, lifted up the
head of Jehoiachin,” that is, gave him a hope of deliverance, This is the first
item. Now it is sin” which hath brought us down,” and when a sinner is made
acquainted with his state as a sinner, he feels then that his heart and soul
are bowed down, and he can in no wise lift up himself. Faith brings in the
Redeemer in His perfection; there is an end to our sin and our folly; by faith
in Him we may lift up our heads and meet the smiles of heaven; we shall meet, by
faith in Him, the approbation of heaven, the light of Jehovah’s countenance; we
shall thus meet our great Creator as our covenant God, dwelling between the
cherubim, and He will shine forth. Here, then, we may say with David, “Thou art
my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.” If, then, we would lift up our
heads, it must be by Jesus Christ; that is, by His wisdom, not by our own;
except that our wisdom consisteth in the feeling our foolishness, and receiving
the Lord Jesus Christ as that way in which we may rise, and do at times rise as
eagles; run, and are not weary; walk, and shall not faint. Second, he brought
him forth out of prison. Here we have another Gospel blessing to go with us all
the days of our life. Jesus Christ came into the prison of our law
responsibility; He became a debtor to do the whole law; and He hath
preceptively, actively, and passively magnified the law. He has gone to the end
of our law responsibility, and has suffered all that sin has entailed. He has
done a great deal more spiritually than Evil-merodach, King of Babylon, did
literally. He brought forth Jehoiachin out of prison, but our Jesus Christ has
destroyed our prison; there is no prison left. The Son of God has made you
free; let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and
that all the days of our lives. So, then, He lifts up our heads, and we are
free. The next thing the king did was a very wonderful thing, an extraordinary,
out-of-the-way, uncommon thing--an unheard-of, an unseen thing almost. And what
was that? Why, “spake kindly unto him” all the days of his life. So our God. He
spake kindly unto us when He called us by His grace, and He has spoken kindly
unto us ever since, and He will speak kindly unto us all the days of our life;
and there will be no danger afterwards, because no manner of cause win exist
after the end of this life for there to be anything but kindness. The law of
kindness is the mightiest power in existence; it will do what nothing else can.
But, fourth, Jehoiachin s throne was set “above the throne of the kings that
were with him in Babylon.” How expressive is this! The Christian has a higher
throne than the highest men in this world. Then, fifth, he changed his prison
garments. So the Lord has promised to give His people the oil of joy for
mourning; the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. But in the last
place--and all these things put together seem to amount to perfection
itself--“he did continually eat bread before the king all the days of his
life.” So we are brought before God and into the presence of God, and as long
as Jesus Christ remains in the presence of God, so long shall His people
remain. Jehoiachin was associated in eating with the king; that is to say, he
partook of the same
food, or he delighted in the same things, the same provisions, the same
pleasant fruits. Now the things the people of God live upon are the testimonies
of the Gospel in Christ.
II. The duration of
these blessings. First, then, his head was lifted up all the days of his life.
Look at it, Christian, what a good life you have before you! You have the Holy
Spirit to keep you believing in Jesus Christ; the day will never come when you
shall not lift up your head to God. You have before you Jesus Christ, the
lifter up of your head; the day will never come when He will cease to love you.
“Having loved His own, He loved them unto the end.” You have God the Father,
with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Ah, then, let me say,
if circumstances of affliction or adversity should be such that you can lift up
your head nowhere else you can lift up your head there; there is a God that
will sustain, that will bear, that will carry to old age, to hoar hairs, and
will deliver. And so he was brought out of prison; and we are made free all the
days of our life. There never will be when we shall not have liberty in Christ;
there never will be when we are not free there. There we may lift up our heads,
because the Saviour has put down into eternal silence everything that is
against us. And the king spake kindly unto him all the days of his life.
Circumstances are like the clouds--not in one shape, nor in one form, nor one
height, nor one colour, nor one position, for a day, or half a day, or half an
hour sometimes; but the glorious truths of the Gospel--His kindness--still the
same. And he set his throne above the kings of Babylon all the days of his
life. I want a religion that places my foot upon the lion, upon the adder, upon
the young lion, upon the dragon, and enables me to trample the whole under
foot. Here, then, is a God that lifts up your head for life, that sets you free
for life, speaks
kindly to you all the days of your life, will keep you enthroned all the days
of your life; you shall reign like a king, and your throne unshaken stands; you
shall wear the royal robe all the days of your life, and be sustained all the
days of your life. What more can you want?
III. Several
Scriptures by which these things are very strikingly and beautifully
exemplified. I will notice three different Scriptures where we have the words
of our text named, “All the days of his life.” David upon this subject saith,
“Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” What goodness and
mercy? First, pastoral goodness and mercy. “He maketh me to lie down,” not in
dry, but “in green pastures,” new covenant promises; “He leadeth me beside the
still waters,” the deep mysteries of His wondrous kingdom; pastoral kindness,
and restorative and directive goodness and mercy. “He restoreth my soul.” I am
sick, wretched, and miserable; He restores me to health; cast down, weary,
everything against me; He restores me again. “He leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness,” paths of faith, righteousness of faith; “for His name’s sake”;
directive and restorative goodness and mercy. Also accompaniment goodness and
mercy. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will
fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.” And
then comes provisional goodness and mercy; “Thou preparest a table before me in
the presence of mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth
over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” Go
from the 23rd to the 27th Psalm. “One thing have I desired of the Lord”; “that
will I seek after.” To be so good and pious that all the world should admire”
you? No, that is self-righteousness, no, that I may dwell in the house of the
Lord all the days of my life.” Well, what are you going to do? “To behold the
beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple. For in the time of trouble He
shall hide me in His pavilion”; His royal pavilion, the place of His royal
authority; and if I have God on my side in His sovereign authority, who can be
against me? “In the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me”; where the
mercy-seat is, that is where I like to be, He shall set me upon a rock. And
what then? “Now shall mine head be lifted up above wine enemies round about me;
therefore I will offer in His tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I
will sing praises unto the Lord.” One more Scripture upon this subject.
Zacharias, in the 1st of Luke, saith, “That we might serve Him without fear, in
holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life.” Here carefully
note how Zacharias comes into possession of that holiness and that
righteousness by which he knew he should serve the Lord acceptably all the days
of his life. He saith, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for He hath visited
and redeemed His people,” “and bath raised up an horn of salvation.” Oh, then,
if you are going to get this holiness by faith in Christ’s eternal redemption,”
I will come with you. “As He spake by the mouth of His holy prophets, which
have been since the world began. So here is redemption, and here is salvation.
Well, that redemption brings holiness, and brings in everlasting righteousness.
Salvation brings holiness, and brings in everlasting righteousness. “To perform
the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember His holy covenant; the oath
which He aware to our father Abraham,” saying, “In thee and in thy seed,”
Christ Jesus, “shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” So, then,
Zacharias got this holiness and righteousness by faith in the redemption,
salvation, mercy, and covenant of Christ, and the oath of God. Now, in
conclusion, if you lose sight of all the rest, do pay attention to the spirit
in which Zacharias desired all the days of his life to serve God. I do not
think there is any Scripture more expressive of the feeling of the right-minded
than that there given. “That He would grant unto us,” &c. How different
this from the spirit in which people suppose that they do God a great favour,
and that they merit great things at His hands, by a little formal service! But
Zacharias looked at being admitted into the faith, the service of faith, the
service of that faith that receives Christ as the end of sin, and thereby you
serve God in Christ as your sanctification and your justification--Zacharias
looked upon that as a Divine grant; “that He would grant unto us to serve Him
in holiness and in righteousness all the days of our life.” (Jas Wells.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》