Jeremiah 15:19-20 Therefore thus said the LORD, If you return, then will I bring you again, and you shall stand before me… If Jeremiah at the time he wrote these words had been asked our modern question, "Is life worth living?" he would have returned a negative answer. For here you have the significant spectacle of a prophet of the Lord cursing the day of his birth. He finds that he is a man of strife and contention to the whole earth; everyone curses him, he says, though he has not given men cause to do so. And God is not keeping His word with him either. "Why is my pain perpetual?" he cries, "and my wound incurable, which refuseth to be healed? Wilt Thou," he says to God, "be altogether unto me as a liar, and as waters that fail?" The prophet cries out for revenge upon his persecutors. Let us admit at once that he was plunged deeply into disappointments. The sense of the Divine pressure in life had come to him early. When he first felt that he must do some great work for God he was very young, and he felt his youth as an objection to undertaking the work. The consciousness of duty and the consciousness of unfitness were there together as they have often been in men. Great geniuses have often begun to show themselves very early, but it is also true that in going on they have had much to unlearn and much to cancel, and they have had to bear the shattering of many dreams. A youth inspired from such heights must needs be bitterly disappointed on the planes of practical life. It was so with Jeremiah. What it was that brought him under the pressure of the higher things so early we do not know. It has been conjectured, and Professor Cornill favours the conjecture, that he had descended from Abiathar, the high priest of David, whom Solomon banished to Anathoth. Jeremiah was brought up there, we know, and his father was a priest. If the conjecture is right, the tale of banishment, the story of the hardship, would come down from sire to son, and the old family virtues and heroisms would be told the children of each generation. In young Jeremiah these found responsive soil, and his enthusiasm was kindled. The lad set out to be a reformer; he was going to put the world right! Now it is certain beforehand that he will meet with terrible disappointments, and not at all unlikely that they will sometimes be so severe that he will curse the day of his birth. That is what befell Jeremiah, as it has befallen others since. In these verses he is in the depths of misery. He notes the sins he has not been guilty of: he has not exacted usury, for example; he recalls how zealous he had been for God: he had found the Divine words and eaten them, assimilated them and made them his own, and had found joy in them. But all to no purpose; everybody was against him; everyone cursed him. But now, here is the significant thing: in the midst of all this, just when he was seeing all men and God in the worst possible light, another thought struck him — the thought that, after all, perhaps it was he himself who was most at fault. Thus saith the Lord: "If thou becomest again Mine, thou shalt be My servant, and if thou wilt separate thy better self from the vile, thou shalt still be as My mouth." What had Jeremiah been doing in his pessimism? He had been allowing the personal factor too much room. Listen: "Revenge me upon my persecutors; take me not away in Thy long-suffering" — as if he said: "Do not be so merciful and patient with them as to let them kill me; take care of me even if they be killed." "Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and prepare them for the day of throttling," he once said. This was not Jeremiah's character, not his better self; this was his mood when stung with disappointment. And this mood was bad; it was what my text calls "the vile." The personal factor was so large that it cast men and God into deep shadow. Jeremiah saw so much of himself, his own virtue, his own failure, that he saw men worse than they were, and God almost as a gigantic untruth. But a great character conquers such moods, and Jeremiah conquered them. It was through his better self that the word of the Lord came to him, and Jeremiah saw that he, in thinking so much of himself, had ceased to be his true self, and had lapsed out of God's service, and that if he wanted to speak again as the mouth of God, and to do God's work, he must separate the precious from the vile, the better self from the baser self in his own nature. Now we are living in an age when pessimism is said to be very prevalent; men take gloomy views of things. I think it is true that when we are pessimistic about things in general the fault is mostly in ourselves. Unreasonable selfishness in some form or other is at the bottom of most pessimism; we allow the personal factor to make a larger claim than the universe is prepared to acknowledge, and we grow sullen at the refusal. 1. This may be the case, and often is in the nobler form of intellectual pursuits, and often in the greaser form of material pursuits. Through philosophy we see some men become pessimistic. They think, and think, they tell us, but the mystery increases, and they despair of thought altogether: the universe is a riddle, and no one can guess its meaning. Now, it is a fine thing to see a man in quest after truth, and it is very honourable in him to make the fullest and frankest inquiry into the nature of things. But, nevertheless, the pessimism, the despair, the wretchedness even here is due to an unreasonable claim on the part of the individual. Is it not rather irrational to suppose that you can uncover the final secret? If that privilege were granted to you, what interest would there be in the world to you or to anyone else? "It is the glory of the Lord," said an old writer, "to conceal a thing," and there was more philosophic insight in the saying than in any number of moderns who whimper and cower before the Great Unknown. Cut down your demands to something like what is reasonable, and then your inquiries will give you much-prized gains — things to rejoice and sing over, and not to break your heart about. There is a peace of mind to be got from knowing what is not possible to us, and accepting the fact like men. Ii man could fully understand God, he would be God. Let him know his own place and fill it like a man. 2. But it is through the material pursuits many grow pessimistic. Many people's thought of God and their neighbours is gloomy simply because they claim too much room for themselves in the world. There are men who are very prosperous in money matters, and in getting position and power, and yet who are always dissatisfied, only because self is their God — the greatest tyrant in the world, never satisfied. It is astonishing how much adversity and disappointment men can bear when they are thinking of another, or others, and how little when thinking of themselves. 3. And out of this arises one other truth — namely, that you must take yourself in hand, and separate the precious from the vile, the better from the baser, in order to be again the servant of the living God, and the exponent of Divine truth. Whenever you see all the world in shadow, all men bad, and doubt even God, be sure it is you who need reforming. There is badness in the world, badness in men, and circumstances may be very trying, but if you are rightly minded, and rightly hearted, you can hope and conquer. It would be a good thing for each of us in melancholy or in bitter moods to stop speaking of the faults of others, and the wrongs of the world, and the problems of God, and ask, "What's wrong with me?" Every man's biggest problem is himself. Not that the circumstances were not trying — they were very trying; not that others had no faults — they had, perhaps, great faults; but faith in God is possible in the worst of situations, so long as we are humble, and in manly relation to our sorrow. When unworthy feelings come in, separate the vile, release the better self, and you will yet be God's servant, and speak for Him. A clean personal life will give you a strong hold on truth, even in the midst of trouble; a pure mind will give you access to Divine reality, though your circumstances might be terribly hard, and though all men reviled you. Mark: Jesus does not say that the circumstances will change; and all that God says to Jeremiah is that he shall be His servant again, and speak for Him. If you separate the better self from the vile, it does not follow that you will create outward success, but you shall go on with your work, and your work shall be a speech for God. I believe that God speaks to us in nature, but I grant that I do not always understand. The notes of the speech are discordant. In the world of man, too, there is much that staggers one. But there is one fact in which I always read the mind of God — this act of separating the precious from the vile in man. Whenever I make an effort to expel something bad, I know I am acting for God; whenever I seek to put down anything that is unworthy, to overcome any animosity or uncharitableness, to make my better nature supreme, I have no doubt of God then. There we find His mind, there we get the beatific vision, and there we equip for the world's work. Will you remember that God says to each one of us, "If thou wilt separate the precious from the vile, thou shalt again be My servant"? Pure life is a clear vision of God for you, and a definite speech for God by you. Nothing speaks like it. A clean soul reflects God as a clear river reflects the sky. You will be yourself an exponent of the eternal in separating the good from the bad in your own life. They mingle strangely — the base with the noble, the false with the true; and their persistent separation speaks of the eternal purpose of redemption. And I am glad of another word in this text. It is the little word "again" — "If thou becomest again Mine." We know what it is to lapse — to feel the relation to God gone; indifference holds us in its icy grasp, where all was once enthusiasm. Let me emphasise this little word — "again." It opens a door; it marks a possibility; it is a Father's voice coming out after you into the darkness. There is a restoring power at work; you may be reunited consciously to God; you may feel Him again to be the Greatest Reality in your life. (T. R. Williams.) Parallel Verses KJV: Therefore thus saith the LORD, 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: let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them. |
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