Jeremiah 33:20
"This is what the LORD says: If you can break My covenant with the day and My covenant with the night, so that day and night cease to occupy their appointed time,
Sermons
The Covenant of God Permanent as the Laws of NatureA.F. Muir Jeremiah 33:19-22
Divine Plans of Action UnalterableHomilistJeremiah 33:20-26
God's Great Day-And-Night EngineG. L. Taylor, D. D.Jeremiah 33:20-26














A curious inversion of Genesis 8:22, but very instructive. There, what is considered by the secular mind as secured by the laws of matter operating mechanically, is declared as a promise, and consequently as dependent upon the good will and gracious purpose of God; here, what appears at first to be within the power of one or both parties to it, is stated to be as absolute and permanent as if it were not a moral engagement but a material law. Accepting, as in vers. 17 and 18, the Messianic as the true fulfilment of this prediction, what do we learn?

I. THE INTRINSIC POWER OF GOD'S WORD. The creative flat was omnipotent; the promise is to be not less so. It is as if a power dwelt within it to bring to pass what it declares. Of course this is not so in the one case any more than in the other. God is in his Word, making it effectual even to its remotest end. We are reminded of Christ's utterance, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away," which seems to make an even stronger assertion. Equally potent is the Word of God in the gospel, its warnings, invitations, and transforming energies.

II. THE ABSOLUTE, ETERNAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST. The human element in the Divine covenant relation has ever been the variable and uncertain one. But through the unique personality of the God Man, and of his atoning sacrifice, that element is strengthened and made secure. An incarnation like that of Emmanuel, an act like the death on the cross, once achieved is irreversible, and its consequences must affect the remotest eternity. The spiritual laws comprehended and illustrated in the transactions of the gospel are as irreversible as those of nature; and in the person and work of Christ there is an objective basis presented that can never be destroyed by the weaknesses or unbelief of men, any more than "my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night."

III. THE SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE OF THE NEW COVENANT. (Ver. 22.) It is really a creative word, because it calls into existence the Church or community of believers, who are the true successors of the seed of David and the Levitical priesthood. In its constant triumphs and the ever increasing nature of the Messianic kingdom, fresh securities are given for the perpetuation of the kingly and priestly functions as developed through the grace of God in human nature. Where the gospel is faithfully preached, and spiritual life truly energizes, believers will, as at Pentecost, be "added daily" and "multiplied." It is like leaven, a seed, etc. As appealing to the deepest needs and yearnings of human nature, it is bound to overcome the world and comprehend the whole race within the zone of its influence. "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth; it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it" (Isaiah 55:11). - M.

If ye can break My covenant of the day, and My covenant of the night... Then may also My covenant be broken with David My servant.
"Day and night in their season" are God's perpetual challenge to unbelief, His sublime witnesses to the perpetuity of His Church. The doubters in Jeremiah's time saw, or thought they saw. in the captivity of Israel already accomplished, and that of Judah foretold as nigh at hand, the complete breakdown of all God's plans and promises as to His people and His Church. They said: "The two families (Judah and Israel) which the Lord did choose, Tie hath even cast them off." "There's an end of all our fine expectations! Prophecy breaks down! God can't keep His contract! Religion is a failure! We told you so!" But what does God say to them in reply? "Thus saith the Lord If My covenant of day and night stand not, if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; then will I also cast away the seed of Jacob, and of David My servant," &c. Thus God reminds the sceptic and the doubter that His covenant with His Church is as firm as that with day and night. We of to-day are in the midst of a sceptical age, and some good people are alarmed at the growth of doubt, and at coldness and troubles in the churches. They firmly believe in the truth of Christianity, but they seem to have lost something of their faith in its conquering power. "What does God mean by His covenant of day and night"? It was equal to saying: "If you can stop the daily rotation I have given to this earth, then you may stay the onward rolling wheels of My Messiah's chariot from the conquest of the world!" That's what God meant, and He has thus far made good His word. Judah, like Israel, for her sins, went into captivity. But unlike Israel, Judah was brought back to do God's work for ages longer; and perhaps for more work in the future than we now understand. The Church lives and grows. Tier ministers are thousands of thousands. "As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured," no more can her people. The earth rolls onward, bringing "day and night in their season," and the sun hears the missionary Angelus chiming around the globe. Let us study this sublime illustration. Look at the daily rotation of this globe, and imagine the power necessary to produce and maintain this rotation. Suppose we see what God's oath of day and night means when represented by steam mechanics. Let us build our engine and run this revolving globe a while by steam power. The earth is not a fiat fly-wheel set upon its edge, but a massive sphere, 8000 miles in diameter. So, by the ratio of size of shaft to size of paddle-wheel on a large steamboat, the earth must be slung on a steel shaft about 250 miles in diameter and 10,000 miles long. It must be driven by an engine whose cylinder should measure 1200 miles bore and 2000 miles stroke, having a piston-rod 100 miles thick and 2500 miles long, working by a connection-rod 3000 miles long on a crank of 1000 miles arm, with a wrist 200 miles long and 50 miles thick. The piston of this engine will make but one revolution daily; but to do that it will travel 4000 miles, at an average velocity of nearly three miles a minute. The working capacity of this engine will be about fourteen thousand million (14,000,000,000) horse-power. It must be controlled by an automatic governor of infallible accuracy, and supplied with inexhaustible fuel and oil; and so run on, day and night, never starting a bolt, nor heating a journal, nor wearing out a box, age after age. The iron bed-frame for this machine must be 10,000 miles square and 4000 miles high, and not tremble a hair under the stroke that drives the equatorial rim of this fly-wheel globe up to a steady velocity of seventeen and one-half miles a minute, twenty times the velocity of a lightning express train! Who'll take the contract to build and run this engine? The vast mass must fly through space in the earth's orbit around the sun, with a velocity of more than 1100 miles a minute. The Armstrong 100-ton steel rifle sends its 2000-pound steel projectile at the rate of 1600 feet per second clean through a solid wrought-iron plate 22 inches thick. But God fires this globe, 8000 miles in diameter, through space with 60 1/2 times the velocity of the monster projectile, and 2000 times that of an express train at 34 miles per hour. And our engine that gives it its day-and-night rotation must fly with it at that speed, and never lose a stroke! And these are very slow among the velocities of the starry worlds. And yet these velocities only represent what God does every moment by the abiding force of that first impulse He gave to this silent spinning globe when He shot it from His creating hand like a top from a boy's finger! Now, imagine the infidel trying to seize, in its mighty sweep, the flying crank that runs this globe, to stop its revolution! What then? Did you ever see a man caught and whirled and mangled on a little factory shaft, reduced to a shapeless pulp in a moment? Even so it has ever been with those who have tried to stop the engine of Christianity.

(G. L. Taylor, D. D.)

Homilist.
I. THE ALMIGHTY BOTH IN THE MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL DEPARTMENTS OF HIS UNIVERSE ACTS FROM PLAN.

1. The text speaks of a "covenant" with material nature as well as with David.

2. The Infinite One acts evermore from plan.(1) A priori reasoning would suggest this.(2) The constitution of the creation shews this. The laws of nature about which philosophers talk are only parts of His plan which they have discovered.(3) The Bible teaches this. It speaks of Him appointing everything in nature (Genesis 1; Genesis 8:21, 22; Isaiah 4:10, 11; Psalm 104. &c.).

II. THE PLAN ON WHICH GOD CONDUCTS THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE IS MANIFESTLY BEYOND THE POWER OF HIS CREATURES TO ALTER.

1. This is a blessing to all. If men could alter the order of nature what would become of us!

2. This is an argument for the Divinity of miracles, if miracles are changes in the order of nature.

III. THE UNALTERABLENESS OF HIS PLAN IN MATERIAL NATURE ILLUSTRATES THE UNALTERABLENESS OF HIS PLAN IN THE SPIRITUAL DEPARTMENT OF ACTION. It is not impossible for God to reverse the order of nature, but it is impossible for God to act contrary to those principles of absolute truth and justice which He has revealed

(Homilist.).

People
Babylonians, Benjamin, David, Ezekiel, Isaac, Jacob, Jeremiah, Levites
Places
Jerusalem, Negeb, Shephelah
Topics
Agreement, Appointed, Break, Broken, Covenant, Daily, Fixed, Longer, Nightly, Possible, Respect, Says, Season, Thus
Outline
1. God promises to the captivity a gracious return;
9. a joyful state;
12. a settled government;
15. Christ the branch of righteousness;
17. a continuance of kingdom and priesthood;
19. and a stability of a blessed seed.

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Jeremiah 33:20

     4903   time
     4921   day

Jeremiah 33:18-22

     1350   covenant, with Israel's priests

Jeremiah 33:19-22

     4360   sand

Jeremiah 33:20-21

     1347   covenant, with Noah

Library
A Threefold Disease and a Twofold Cure.
'I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against Me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against Me.'--JER. xxxiii. 8. Jeremiah was a prisoner in the palace of the last King of Judah. The long, national tragedy had reached almost the last scene of the last act. The besiegers were drawing their net closer round the doomed city. The prophet had never faltered in predicting its fall, but he had as uniformly
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Things Unknown
"Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not."--Jeremiah 33:3. GOD'S PEOPLE WILL NEVER THRIVE on anything less substantial than bread from heaven. Israel in Egypt might live on garlic and onions, but Israel in the wilderness must be fed with the manna that came down from heaven, and with the water that gushed out of the rock, when it was smitten by the rod of God. The child of God, while he is yet in his sins, may, like other men, revel in them,
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 46: 1900

Discerning Prayer.
INTRODUCTORY. BY D.W. WHITTLE. To recognize God's existence is to necessitate prayer to Him, by all intelligent creatures, or, a consciously living in sin and under condemnation of conscience, because they do not pray to Him. It would be horrible to admit the existence of a Supreme Being, with power and wisdom to create, and believe that the creatures he thought of consequence and importance enough to bring into existence, are not of enough consequence for him to pay any attention to in the troubles
Various—The Wonders of Prayer

The Royal Priesthood
Gerhard Ter Steegen Jer. xxxiii. 18; Rev. i. 6 The race of God's anointed priests shall never pass away; Before His glorious Face they stand, and serve Him night and day. Though reason raves, and unbelief flows on, a mighty flood, There are, and shall be, till the end, the hidden priests of God. His chosen souls, their earthly dross consumed in sacred fire, To God's own heart their hearts ascend in flame of deep desire; The incense of their worship fills His Temple's holiest place; Their song with
Frances Bevan—Hymns of Ter Steegen, Suso, and Others

The Best of the Best
"I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys."--Song of Solomon 2:1. THE time of flowers has come, and as they are in some faint degree emblems of our Lord, it is well, when God thus calls, that we should seek to learn what he desires to teach us by them. If nature now spreads out her roses and her lilies, or prepares to do so, let us try, not only to see them, but to see Christ as he is shadowed forth in them. "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys." If these are the words
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 42: 1896

Nature of Covenanting.
A covenant is a mutual voluntary compact between two parties on given terms or conditions. It may be made between superiors and inferiors, or between equals. The sentiment that a covenant can be made only between parties respectively independent of one another is inconsistent with the testimony of Scripture. Parties to covenants in a great variety of relative circumstances, are there introduced. There, covenant relations among men are represented as obtaining not merely between nation and nation,
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

Putting God to Work
"For from of old men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen a God beside thee who worketh for him that waiteth for him."--Isaiah 64:4. The assertion voiced in the title given this chapter is but another way of declaring that God has of His own motion placed Himself under the law of prayer, and has obligated Himself to answer the prayers of men. He has ordained prayer as a means whereby He will do things through men as they pray, which He would not otherwise do. Prayer
Edward M. Bounds—The Weapon of Prayer

Be Ye Therefore Perfect, Even as Your Father which is in Heaven is Perfect. Matthew 5:48.
In the 43rd verse, the Savior says, "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward
Charles G. Finney—Lectures to Professing Christians

The Sermon of the Seasons
"Oh, the long and dreary Winter! Oh, the cold and cruel Winter!" We say to ourselves, Will spring-time never come? In addition to this, trade and commerce continue in a state of stagnation; crowds are out of employment, and where business is carried on, it yields little profit. Our watchmen are asked if they discern any signs of returning day, and they answer, "No." Thus we bow our heads in a common affliction, and ask each man comfort of his fellow; for as yet we see not our signs, neither does
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 32: 1886

Twentieth Day for God's Spirit on the Heathen
WHAT TO PRAY.--For God's Spirit on the Heathen "Behold, these shall come from far; and these from the land of Sinim."--ISA. xlix. 12. "Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall haste to stretch out her hands to God."--PS. lxviii. 31. "I the Lord will hasten it in His time."--ISA. lx. 22. Pray for the heathen, who are yet without the word. Think of China, with her three hundred millions--a million a month dying without Christ. Think of Dark Africa, with its two hundred millions. Think
Andrew Murray—The Ministry of Intercession

Truth Hidden when not Sought After.
"They shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables."--2 Tim. iv. 4. From these words of the blessed Apostle, written shortly before he suffered martyrdom, we learn, that there is such a thing as religious truth, and therefore there is such a thing as religious error. We learn that religious truth is one--and therefore that all views of religion but one are wrong. And we learn, moreover, that so it was to be (for his words are a prophecy) that professed Christians,
John Henry Newman—Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII

Cleansing.
As there are conditions requiring to be complied with in order to the obtaining of salvation, before one can be justified, e. g., conviction of sin, repentance, faith; so there are conditions for full salvation, for being "filled with the Holy Ghost." Conviction of our need is one, conviction of the existence of the blessing is another; but these have been already dealt with. "Cleansing" is another; before one can be filled with the Holy Ghost, one's heart must be "cleansed." "Giving them the Holy
John MacNeil—The Spirit-Filled Life

Curiosity a Temptation to Sin.
"Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away."--Proverbs iv. 14, 15. The chief cause of the wickedness which is every where seen in the world, and in which, alas! each of us has more or less his share, is our curiosity to have some fellowship with darkness, some experience of sin, to know what the pleasures of sin are like. I believe it is even thought unmanly by many persons (though they may not like to say
John Henry Newman—Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII

Jeremiah
The interest of the book of Jeremiah is unique. On the one hand, it is our most reliable and elaborate source for the long period of history which it covers; on the other, it presents us with prophecy in its most intensely human phase, manifesting itself through a strangely attractive personality that was subject to like doubts and passions with ourselves. At his call, in 626 B.C., he was young and inexperienced, i. 6, so that he cannot have been born earlier than 650. The political and religious
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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