Expositions of Holy Scripture: Isaiah and Jeremiah Part 61

Note further the personal object of Faith--'in ME.' The object of Faith is not a proposition but a Person. That Person is the same in the Old Testament and in the New. The Jehovah of the one is the G.o.d in Christ of the other. Consequently faith must be more than intellectual a.s.sent, it must be voluntary and emotional, the act of the whole man, 'the synthesis of the reason and the will.'

II. The contrast of a formal and real union with G.o.d.

The king, prophets, priests, the whole nation, had an outward connection with Him, but it meant nothing. And this foreigner, a slave, perhaps not even a proselyte, a eunuch, had what the children of the covenant had not, a true union with G.o.d through Faith.

Judaism was not an exclusive system, but was intended to bring in the nations to share in its blessings. Outward descent gave outward place within the covenant, but the distinction of real and formal place there was established from the beginning. What else than this is the meaning of all the threatenings of Deuteronomy? What else did Isaiah mean when he called the rulers in Jerusalem 'Rulers of Sodom'? Here the fates of Ebedmelech and of Zedekiah ill.u.s.trate both sides of the truth. The danger of trusting in outward possession and of thinking that G.o.d's mercy is our property besets all Churches. Organisations of Christianity are necessary, but it is impossible to tell the harm that formal connection with them has done. There is only one bond that unites men to G.o.d--personal trust in Him as 'in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.'

III. The possibility of exercising uniting faith even in most unfavourable circ.u.mstances.

This Ebedmelech had everything against him. The contemptuous exclusion of him from any share in the covenant might well have discouraged him.

The poorest Jew treated him as a heathen dog, who had no right even to crumbs from the table spread for the children only. He was plunged into a sea of G.o.dlessness, and saw examples enough of utter carelessness as to Jehovah in His professed servants to drive him away from a religion which had so little hold on its professed adherents. The times were gloomy, and the Jehovah whom Judah professed to wors.h.i.+p seemed to have small power to help His wors.h.i.+ppers. It would have been no wonder if the conduct of the people of Jerusalem had caused the name of Jehovah to be blasphemed by this Gentile, nor if he had revolted from a religion that was alleged to be the special property of one race, and that such a race! But he listened to the cry of his own heart, and to the words of G.o.d's prophet, and his faith pierced through all obstacles--like the roots of some tree feeling for the water. He found the vitalising fountain that he sought, and His name stands to all ages as a witness that no seeking heart, that longs for G.o.d, is ever balked in its search, and that a faith, very imperfect as to its knowledge, may be so strong as to its substance that it unites him who exercises it with G.o.d, while the possessors of ecclesiastical privileges and of untarnished and full-orbed orthodox knowledge have no fellows.h.i.+p with Him.

IV. The safety given by such uniting faith.

To Ebedmelech, escape from death by the besiegers' swords was promised.

To us a more blessed safety and exemption from a worse destruction are a.s.sured. 'The life which is life indeed' may be ours, and shall a.s.suredly be ours, if our trust knits us to Him who is the Life, and who has said 'He that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.'

G.o.d'S PATIENT PLEADINGS

'I sent unto you all my servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate.'--JER.

xliv. 4.

The long death-agony of the Jewish kingdom has come to an end. The frivolous levity, which fed itself on illusions and would not be sobered by facts, has been finally crushed out of the wretched people.

The dreary succession of incompetent kings--now a puppet set up by Egypt, now another puppet set up by Babylon, has ended with the weak Zedekiah. The throne of David is empty, and the long line of kings, which numbered many a strong, wise, holy man, has dwindled into a couple of captives, one of them blind and both of them paupers on an idolatrous monarch's bounty. The country is desolate, the bulk of the people exiles, and the poor handful, who had been left by the conqueror, flitting like ghosts, or clinging, like domestic animals, to their burnt homes and wasted plains, have been quarrelling and fighting among themselves, murdering the Jewish ruler whom Babylon had left them, and then in abject terror have fled _en ma.s.se_ across the border into Egypt, where they are living wretched lives. What a history that people had gone through since they had lived on the same soil before!

From Moses to Zedekiah, what a story! From Goshen till now it had been one long tragedy which seems to have at last reached its fifth act.

Nine hundred years have pa.s.sed, and this is the issue of them all!

The circ.u.mstances might well stir the heart of the prophet, whose doleful task it had been to foretell the coming of the storm, who had had to strip off Judah's delusions and to proclaim its certain fall, and who in doing so had carried his life in his hand for forty years, and had never met with recognition or belief.

Jeremiah had been carried off by the fugitives to Egypt, and there he made a final effort to win them back to G.o.d. He pa.s.sed before them the outline of the whole history of the nation, treating it as having accomplished one stadium--and what does he find? In all these days since Goshen there has been one monotonous story of vain divine pleadings and human indifference, G.o.d beseeching and Israel turning away--and now at last the crash, long foretold, never credited, which had been drawing nearer through all the centuries, has come, and Israel is scattered among the people.

Such are the thoughts and emotions that speak in the exquisitely tender words of our text. It suggests--

I. G.o.d's antagonism to sin.

II. The great purpose of all His pleadings.

III. G.o.d's tender and unwearied efforts.

IV. The obstinate resistance to His tender pleadings.

I. G.o.d's antagonism to sin.

It is the one thing in the universe to which He is opposed. Sin is essentially antagonism to G.o.d. People shrink from the thought of G.o.d's hatred of sin, because of--

An underestimate of its gravity. Contrast the human views of its enormity, as shown by men's playing with it, calling it by half-jocose names and the like, with G.o.d's thought of its heinousness.

A false dread of seeming to attribute human emotions to G.o.d. But there is in G.o.d what corresponds to our human feelings, something a.n.a.logous to the att.i.tude of a pure human mind recoiling from evil.

The divine love must necessarily be pure, and the mightier its energy of forth-going, the mightier its energy of recoil. G.o.d's 'hate' is Love inverted and reverted on itself. A divine love which had in it no necessity of hating evil would be profoundly immoral, and would be called devilish more fitly than divine.

II. The great purpose of the divine pleadings.

To wean from sin is the main end of prophecy. It is the main end of all revelation. G.o.d must chiefly desire to make His creatures like Himself.

Sin makes a special revelation necessary. Sin determines the form of it.

III. G.o.d's tender and unwearied efforts.

'Rising early' is a strong metaphor to express persistent effort. The more obstinate is our indifference, the more urgent are His calls. He raises His voice as our deafness grows. Mark, too, the tenderness of the entreaty in this text, 'Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate!' His hatred of it is adduced as a reason which should touch any heart that loves Him. He beseeches as if He, too, were saying, 'Though I might be bold to enjoin thee' that which is fitting, 'yet for love's sake I rather beseech thee.' The manifestation of His disapproval and the appeal to our love by the disclosure of His own are the most powerful, winning and compelling dehortations from sin. Not by brandis.h.i.+ng the whip, not by a stern law written on tables of stone, but by unveiling His heart, does G.o.d win us from our sins.

IV. The obstinate resistance to G.o.d's tender pleadings.

The tragedy of the nation is summed up in one word, 'They hearkened not.'

That power of neglecting G.o.d's voice and opposing G.o.d's will is the mystery of our nature. How strange it is that a human will should be able to lift itself in opposition to the Sovereign Will! But stranger and more mysterious and tragic still is it that we should choose to exercise that power and find pleasure, and fancy that we shall ever find advantage, in refusing to listen to His entreaties and choosing to flout His uttered will.

Such opposition was Israel's ruin. It will be ours if we persist in it.

'If G.o.d spared not the natural branches, neither will He spare thee.'

THE SWORD OF THE LORD

'O thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still. 7. How can it be quiet, seeing the Lord hath given it a charge?'--JER. xlvii. 6, 7.

The prophet is here in the full tide of his prophecies against the nations round about. This paragraph is entirely occupied with threatenings. Bearing the cup of woes, he turns to one after another of the ancestral enemies of Israel, Egypt and Philistia on the south and west, Moab on the south and east, then northwards to Ammon, south to Edom, north to Damascus, Kedar, Hagor, Elam, and finally to the great foe--Babylon. In the hour of Israel's lowest fortunes and the foe's proudest exultation these predictions are poured out. Jeremiah stands as if wielding the sword of which our text speaks, and whirls and points the flas.h.i.+ng terror of its sharpened edge against the ring of foes. It turns every way, like the weapon of the angelic guard before the lost paradise, and wherever it turns a kingdom falls.

In the midst of his stern denunciations he checks himself to utter this plaintive cry of pity and longing. A tender gleam of compa.s.sion breaks through the heart of the thunder-cloud. It is very beautiful to note that the point at which the irrepressible welling up of sweet waters breaks the current of his prophecy is the prediction against Israel's bitterest, because nearest, foe, 'these uncirc.u.mcised Philistines.' He beholds the sea of wrath drowning the great Philistine plain, its rich harvests trampled under foot by 'stamping of hoofs of his strong ones,'

and that desolation wrings from his heart the words of our text. I take them to be spoken by the prophet. That, of course, is doubtful. It may be that they are meant to give in a vivid dramatic form the effect of the judgments on the sufferers. They recognise these as 'the sword of the Lord.' Their only thought is an impatient longing that the judgments would cease,--no confession of sin, no humbling of them selves, but only--'remove Thy hand from us.'

And the answer is either the prophet's or the divine voice; spoken in the one case to himself, in the other to the Philistines; but in either setting forth the impossibility that the sweeping sword should rest, since it is the instrument in G.o.d's hand, executing His charge and fulfilling His appointment.

I. The shrinking from the unsheathed sword of the Lord.

We may deal with the words as representing very various states of mind.

They may express the impatience of sufferers. Afflictions are too often wasted. Whatever the purpose of chastis.e.m.e.nt, the true lesson of it is so seldom learned, even in regard to the lowest wisdom it is adapted to teach. In an epidemic, how few people learn to take precautions, such as cleanliness or attention to diet! In hard times commercially, how slow most are to learn the warning against luxury, over-trading, haste to be rich! And in regard to higher lessons, men have a dim sense sometimes that the blow comes from G.o.d, but, like Balaam, go on their way in spite of the angel with the sword. It does not soften, nor restrain, nor drive to G.o.d. The main result is, impatient longing for its removal.

The text may express the rooted dislike to the thought and the fact of punishment as an element in divine government. This is a common phase of feeling always, and especially so now. There is a present tendency, good in many aspects, but excessive, to soften away the thought of punishment; or to suppose that G.o.d's punishments must have the same purposes as men's. We cannot punish by way of retribution, for no balance of ours is fine enough to weigh motives or to determine criminality. Our punishments can only be deterrent or reformatory, but this is by reason of our weakness. He has other objects in view.