Notes on Jeremiah - Chambers, Oswald
Notes on Jeremiah
Oswald Chambers
Copyright 1936 Oswald Chambers Publications Association
Scripture translations quoted: kjv, rv
Introduction
Source
Notes on Jeremiah is from lectures that were part of Oswald Chambers’ study of the Four Great Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel) in the biblical theology class at the Bible Training College,1 Lon- don, in 1912 and 1913.
Publishing History
• As articles: The lectures were published as articles in the Bible Training Course (BTC) Monthly Journal,2 from May 1936 through March 1940.
• As a book: This material has never before been published in book form.
This material covers only the first 29 chapters of Jeremiah. Undoubtedly, Chambers lectured on the entire book, but Mrs. Chambers was unable to take her usual verbatim shorthand notes of the entire series.
In reading these notes, it should be remembered that the lectures were delivered to students with open Bibles in a setting where study of the biblical text was an integral part of the educational process. As always, Chambers’ goal in teaching was not imparting knowledge but seeing lives changed by the Holy Spirit of God.
Contents
Jeremiah 1 ……………………………………………………………………………1391
The Dawning of the Eternal Word…………………………………………1392
Unrequited Love Jeremiah 2–3 ……………………………………………….1393
“Life, a Fury Slinging Flame” Jeremiah 4 ………………………………….1394
“When Time’s a Maniac Scattering Dust” Jeremiah 4:11–22 ………1395
“Lo, There Was No Man” Jeremiah 4:23–5:6……………………………1396
Masked Perils Jeremiah 5:7–21 ……………………………………………….1398
The City of Dreadful Night Jeremiah 5–6 ………………………………..1399
The City of Dreadful Night (Continued) Jeremiah 6…………………..1400
Reprobate Jeremiah 6 …………………………………………………………….1402
Degraded Devotion Jeremiah 7 ……………………………………………….1403
The Cup of the Lord and of Devils Jeremiah 7:16–34 ………………..1404
Eternal Insomnia Jeremiah 8…………………………………………………..1405
Infatuation Jeremiah 8:14–9:8 …………………………………………………1407
Lachryma Christi Jeremiah 9:9–26 ………………………………………….1408
Irreconcilable Jeremiah 10:1–16 ………………………………………………1409
Correction Jeremiah 10:17–11:8 ……………………………………………..1410
Misapprehension Jeremiah 11:9–12:6 ………………………………………1412
Progressive Realisation Jeremiah 12:7–17 …………………………………1413
Defacement Jeremiah 13:1–17 ………………………………………………..1414
The Silent Sacred Land Jeremiah 13:18–27 ………………………………1415
Drought Jeremiah 14……………………………………………………………..1416
Scarcely Saved Jeremiah 16 …………………………………………………….1417
The Fountain of Life Jeremiah 17……………………………………………1418
The Fountain of Life (Continued) Jeremiah 17 ………………………….1419
Dizziness Jeremiah 17:14–18 ………………………………………………….1420
The Potter and the Clay Jeremiah 17:19–18:10 …………………………1421
Excelsior Jeremiah 18:11–23 …………………………………………………..1422
Broken Pottery Jeremiah 19 ……………………………………………………1423
The Foolishness of God Jeremiah 20 ……………………………………….1424
The Fear of God Jeremiah 22 …………………………………………………1425
Prophets Wise and Otherwise Jeremiah 23 ……………………………….1426
Rule or Ruin Jeremiah 23 ……………………………………………………….1427
Hidden Rocks Jeremiah 23:9–12……………………………………………..1428
Submerged Rocks Jeremiah 23:23–40 ………………………………………1430
What Worth to God? Jeremiah 24 ………………………………………….1431
The Day of the Lord Jeremiah 25–26 ………………………………………1432
The Burden of the Yoke Jeremiah 27……………………………………….1433
Sealed Orders Jeremiah 28 ……………………………………………………..1434
Otherworldliness in This World Jeremiah 29:1–14 ……………………1435
How Long? Jeremiah 29:15–32 ………………………………………………1436
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 5 May 1936 no. 2
notes on Jeremiah
Some valuable comments on the Book of Jeremiah by Oswald Chambers are being prepared for the Journal for the
coming year. This is instead of the Notes referred to last month. They will appear later. Meanwhile these Notes
on Jeremiah will come with inspiration and enlightenment on that great Prophet of God.
Jeremiah 1
I was not born
Informed and fearless from the first, but shrank
From aught which marked me out apart from men:
I would have lived their life, and died their death
Lost in their ranks, eluding destiny:
I profess no other share
In this selection of my lot, than this
My ready answer to the will of God
Who summons me to be his organ. All
Whose innate strength supports them shall succeed
No better than the sages.
Browning
There is a difference between a personal experience of sanctification and the call of God to be a worker. The latter involves the very mystery that was exhibited in the life of Our Lord, viz. , the sanctification of my holy self to God. “For their sakes I sanctify Myself ” ( John 17:19). Just as Our Lord was made broken bread and poured-out wine for us, so the worker is to be made broken bread and poured-out wine for others. These great big shadowy prophetic figures are difficult to define, but bring them to the light of Jesus Christ and you will see their meaning. Jesus Christ is the only One Who can throw light on the prophecies of Isaiah, and He is the only One Who throws any kind of light on the acute suffering and amazing misery of this prophet.
We are apt to conceive of a servant of God as being a great strong terrific leader whom nothing ever affects. In Jeremiah the acme of human sensitiveness is sanctified in the service of God. The servant of God is never self-elected, there is always this impelling call of God, and it is always the most unlikely man, the most unlikely woman, God calls.
Jeremiah is not suffering for his own sin, or because he is sensitive; he is suffering because he has seen what Jesus Christ knew better than anyone, that there is a deep moral tragedy at the heart of human beings. Sin is not weakness, it is not disease, it is red-handed rebellion against God, and the magnitude of that rebellion is expressed in the Cross of Christ. If we are going to get near the threshold of what the agony of Our Lord represents, we must get far beyond the individual small mean 3 ideas of our own particular troubles and religious experiences; we must be made to understand what the positive vile evil of the world is in God’s sight. We know heart- hunger and soul-despair for ourselves, but have we ever understood what Jesus Christ wanted His disciples to understand when He took them to watch with Him in the Garden?
Very few of us understand why clouds of darkness come. It is God trying to get us into line with the prophets and apostles. It is the Holy Spirit seeking to bring us into the place of vicarious intercession, and we nearly always misunderstand it and say, “I must have sinned, ” or “I must get out of this, I have got the blues. ” “Ah, Lord God! I cannot speak: for I am a child. ” That is said not in the sense of weakness but—”I don’t comprehend, I don’t begin to see what the mes- sage means; and God said, “Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee. ” Jeremiah was not a personality like Elijah or Moses, a great towering leader, he was the exact antipodes. All through his prophecy we shall find that he was a man who would have done anything rather than what God made him do. Every nature brings with it the setting of its own temptation.
In as far as we have ever heard the call of God the recoil of our nature is a staggering from the whole thing. “Who is sufficient for these things? ” “But I cannot, I am a child. ” It is not cowardice or weakness, but the transition moment when the whole life is staggered by the blow of the revelation. Never call it weakness or lack of faith. Jeremiah saw from God’s standpoint the positive challenging of God, the Satanic hatred of God, and it meant for him the bathing in sorrows the human frame could scarcely stand, but Jeremiah’s courage was superb. It was not the courage of foolhardiness but the courage of a hypersensitive man being held by God; he sees the terror of the evil and wrong and knows his own sensitiveness, and yet hears God saying, “Be not afraid. ” There are people who are fearless and we say they are courageous, but there is no moral virtue in their courage, it is born either of physical or moral obtuseness. Spiritual courage is the high heart that sees the difficulty and faces it. That is the courage that is valuable to God.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol . 5 June 1936 no . 3
notes on Jeremiah
The dawning of the eternal word
Give me a voice, a cry and a complaining,—
Oh let my sound be stormy in their ears!
Throat that would shout but cannot stay for
straining.
Eyes that would weep but cannot wait for tears.
Myers4
Now the word of the Lord came unto me, saying . . . ( Jeremiah 1:4 rv) Beware of separating personal spiritual life from historical facts. Spiritual life is not simply the illumination of the Spirit of God in a man, it is much more; spiritual life is based on historical facts, i. e. , on the life and statements of Jesus Christ. The great snare is to go off on new things; Jesus said the Holy Spirit will “bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you” (rv). There is always a witness, the word comes, it comes to us from without. How am I to know what God has ordained me for? By His eternal word. We have to stir up our minds and find out what God’s purpose is by obeying His word and relying on His Spirit. “My people doth not consider, ” says God (Isaiah 1:3). Will the word of God come to me? Of course it will! Will the Spirit of God see that I fulfil that word? Of course He will! If we will keep in the light with God, our destination is as sure and as established as God, as certain as His throne. When once you realise the Divine purpose behind your life you will never say again, “I am so weak”; you will know you are, but you will be strong in His strength. The only strength we have is the strength of God, which comes to us from the vision of God and of His power. The time of stress in which there is no vision, no insight, no sensing of the presence of God, is the time to stand firm in faith in God and God will do all the rest. Keep true to God and your development in God’s plan is certain.
“I am with thee to deliver thee” (Jeremiah 1:19). This promise to Jeremiah was a marvellous sustaining that never left him (see 15:20). But what would have been the good of that promise if Jeremiah had not come face to face with the Speaker of those words? What good would it have been for Jesus to say, “Lo, I am with you all the days” (rv mg) before His resurrection and appearing to the disciples? The vision of Jesus Himself is granted to a man’s spirit; he sees and knows not only what Jesus has done for him but Who his Lord is; then every time His word is recalled there is an incoming of a courage which never can fail. The “Go” of Mark 16:15 was said after the disciples had seen Jesus. We must not only be saved and sanctified, but we must have seen Jesus and heard Him say, “Go ye. “
The prophets had to live through this trial of faith in God’s word before they uttered it. Jeremiah experienced this personal trial of faith in God. His statements were not the statements of a gramophone—”God will bring everything out all right, I need not care. ” Jeremiah was in the grip of a dominating purpose that made him care, and with sublime courage he declared God’s word all the time. The spirit of God does not put things simply to the intellect; He puts them simply to the heart.
Jeremiah traces his spiritual awakening to God’s use of Nature to him ( Jeremiah 1:11–12). A prophet sees more than an ordinary man sees. The budding rod of an almond tree would mean to us, Spring is coming; to Jeremiah it meant, Jehovah is awaking. God made the natural thing that Jeremiah saw a symbol to expound His purpose to him; it was a symbolic portrayal of an inner meaning. Nothing can stand a prophet in good stead but what he sees when God opens his eyes.
The reason men and women are exhausted in life is because they have not realised God’s purpose for them; when once they are awakened by the Spirit of God, regenerated by Him, and fitted on to His purpose for them, they will end where God wants them to end.
We are predestined by God to be His sons, but not in spite of ourselves. God has so constituted things that if we refuse to fulfill our predestination everything will tell in contrast to that predestination (cf. John 8:44). The confusion is to make predestination mean we have no choice at all; we have. Jeremiah had the choice, he nearly made the great refusal and said, No. We have power to disobey; if we had not we should have no power to obey; but we have no power to alter the almighty decrees of God. Divine sovereignty means that God created man for a Divine purpose. God’s destiny for man is by His throne; wrath and confusion is the result for any man who steps aside.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 5 July 1936 no. 4
notes on Jeremiah
Unrequited love
Jeremiah 2–3
I remember . . . the love of thine espousals. (Jeremiah 2:2)
God is the “adornment” of His people; but God says, “My people have forgotten Me days without number”; the dead set of their life has been away from God ( Jeremiah 2:32). Forgetting as an infirmity of mere consciousness is one thing; but forgetting by steadfastly refusing to recognise is another thing. These people had deliberately turned out of God’s way. They were wantoning after some other god than the God Who is holy (2:33).
If we would get used to recognising the anguish and horror in God’s heart when His people wanton to worldliness, we should understand better why the prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New Testament use terms of the most disgusting offence known amongst civilised men (see 2:24–25); the words are spoken to those who have forsaken what they know.
The thing that shocks us most is not the thing that shocked Jesus most. Social immorality shocks us till we don’t know where we are; but what struck the heart of Jesus Christ with horror was immorality against God, pride against Himself (see Luke 16:15). “They hated Me without a cause. ” If you are true to God and you come across a man who does not want to be true to God, you will find a growing inveterate hatred and venom that can only end in murder in some way or another. Don’t banish the bold, crimson language of the prophets by thinking only of physical murder; anyone who has wronged or tempted or neglected his brother, or has multiplied temptations in the way of God’s little ones, is called blood-guilty by the prophets (see 2:34). “Yet thou saidst, I am innocent. ” The innocence arising from evil is always like that—”I’ve done nothing. ” It is the innocence we are all born with; sooner or later it takes its stand with evil and only knows good by contrast; whereas the innocence arising from the presence of the Spirit of God takes its stand with good and knows evil only by contrast.
If we hand our hearts over to God we need never know in experience that what Jesus Christ says of the human heart is true (see Mark 7:20–23). When we have to bolster up our position by reasons and arguments it is a sure sign we are on a rotten foundation, and behind our plausible talk we are at our wits’ end working to secure a right position. The instinct that inspires a backslider is on the diplomatic line. Jeremiah 3:4–5. Jeremiah says these people speak all right but they do evil all the time. The prevailing attitude to-day is the healthy-minded attitude that treats remorse as a disease of the nerves and sin as a mere intel- lectual nuisance—”Do things; don’t give way to absurd self-examination. ” Jesus Christ stands for the unhindered facing of the world, the flesh and the devil, and an equally unhindered facing of God, and such a facing will always bring a man to the evangelical attitude—”Just as I am. ” Beware of bracing yourself up to be cheerful when you should be broken up into repentance.
Watch and beware of universal notions that ride rough-shod over intimate things, over suffering, and above all over sin. It is difficult for a spiritually minded person to understand why people are attracted by New Theology, Christian Science, Buddhism.
These things attract the semi-cultured people, and it is those people with whom we come in contact; they are removed by position and training from the gross evils of life, and are interested in religious topics and always hunting for some ideal to which they can give their intellectual assent. It is amongst this crowd that most of our work has to be done, and it is where we find the most opposition to God. We do not need a new Gospel; what we need is the old truths re-stated to hit the things that are wrong to- day. If you use the terms of a bygone age and apply them to the sins of bygone days, you don’t hit the things that are wrong to-day. Sin was in existence in Jeremiah’s day, and in John Wesley’s day, and it is in our existence in our day, but in very different guises. To-day we have to fight the Higher Thought teach- ing, the Mind Cure teaching, Christian Science; the one great objection of all these is to sin.
Sin to them is a mere nuisance. It works out along the line that the miraculous is never going to happen—”God can- not make the past as though it had never been”; “God cannot raise the dead”; “God cannot heal the sick; He cannot forgive sin. ” We have to be amongst them as those who know that God Almighty does the exceptional and the miraculous. It is comparatively easy to do work amongst the submerged tenth, to present Jesus Christ to them, for they flock into the Kingdom of God before the other class. The one safeguard is in a personal attitude to a personal Lord and Saviour.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 5 October 1936 no . 7
notes on Jeremiah
“Life, a Fury slinging Flame”
Jeremiah 4
The great truth underlying calamity is that the truth and the way of God is seen but abandoned because it is too difficult. Unless we understand this we shall misjudge God in His dealings with His people and imagine that He is too stern. In personal life the same truth applies; calamity and disaster always follow when God’s way is seen but abandoned because it was difficult. Abandon is not rebellion yet; abandon simply means—”That is a nice vision, but it is not for me. ” From that moment you begin your chapter of calamities; if you have seen the vision, it is for you. Every now and again, not often, but sometimes, God brings us to a point of climax, either as sinners or saints, and it means the Great Divide in our life; we either abandon into worse sordidness spiritually or we become ablaze for the glory of God.
1. Where the Battle’s Lost or Won ( Jeremiah 4:1–2)
“If thou wilt put away thine abominations out of My sight . . . ” ( Jeremiah 4:1). The battle is lost or won in the secret places of the will with God alone, never first in external circumstances. The battle may take one minute or a year, it depends on you, not on God. The Spirit of God apprehends us till we are obliged to get alone with Him, and until the battle is fought out between ourselves and God we will lose it every time in circumstances. We say, “I will wait until I get into the circumstances and put God to the test, ” we cannot, we must transact business with God in secret in our own wills. When that is done we can go forth with the smiling certainty that our battle is won, nothing will ever again enthral us on that line. The world, the flesh and the devil have not the slightest power over the man who can rule his own spirit, who has fought the battle out before God and won there. When that is done, the external life is child’s play; lose it there, and calamity and disaster and upset are as fatally sure as God’s decrees.
2. Where the Bitter Ways Begin ( Jeremiah 4:3–4)
“Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns” (4:3). Get rid of all your idols, then plough up the ground and sow without the thorns. If God gives you a clear indication in regard to something in your life and what He wants you to do, and you say, “Yes, Lord, I will do it, ” but you don’t proceed to plough up the fallow ground for that purpose and remove the extraneous thing, you will have a cruel conflict. Spiritually every domain of our personal life that comes under apprehension by the Spirit of God is a call to cultivate it for God. We limit God by reminding our- selves of what we have allowed Him to do in the past, and that is why some people are continually going round in a circle spiritually till they get dizzy; they won’t break up the new soil of their life for God.
When the secret places of your will before God are revealed you know exactly what you have to do. Let the word of God bore a hole in your self- complacency about the particular thing He has hauled you up about and then put in another word that He brings to you, and you will soon find His dynamite at work. It will come in and blow the bedrock of your obstinacy to splithereens, and never will it occur again in that particular line. In His parable of the sower and the seed our Lord uses the stony ground as indicative of spiritual feignedness, the bedrock of obstinacy has never been blasted to atoms. We are choked by a little thing that has not its root in God, which God condemned and we pathetically wept over but left there. To compromise with anything God has condemned is to be condemned (see John 3:19).
To see a thing must be removed and not remove it is to be scorched and withered, by God’s decree. Unless we have taken in secret before God the territory of our own personal life for Him, when the trumpet is sounded and the standard raised in external circumstances ( Jeremiah 4:5–6), we shall be swept like chaff before the wind. Never put a thing off and say, “It does not matter, no one sees. ” No, but they will see you go down like standing corn before the scythe in external circumstances, because you played the traitor to God in secret. If God has revealed any- thing to you for the tiniest glimmer of a second and you don’t obey Him and cultivate that territory for Him, you will go down when the crisis comes.
Other people seem to be kept and yet they were not living in the external life quite as well as you; but the point was in secret between you and God, you had only feigned obedience. The explanation of many a calamity is along that line—one fact more in lives which we never guessed at, and when the storm came and the wind blew and the rain beat, the life was not found established on the rock and down it went, the reason being it had not been true in the place of secret test- ing. The great danger in the time of secret testing is conferring with flesh and blood. Remember, God does not look at people as we look at them; He looks at us where He alone can see, viz. , our hearts.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 5 November 1936 no. 8
notes on Jeremiah
“When times a maniac scattering dust”
Jeremiah 4:11–22
The prophecies of Jeremiah are a powerful and timely reminder that human beings are not pathetic babes in the wood, but mutinous people. Ours is not a pathetic separation from God, but a tragic one. It is difficult to get the modern mind to face the dark line that runs all through the Bible; our mood to-day is healthy minded and pathetic and the things in the Bible don’t seem to have anything to do with us, but it is good to have the veil lifted and know what we would be like if Jesus Christ had not died. There is a reason in the justice of God for all the dire calamities that happen. If we drink in the atmosphere of religious life round about us, we shall find any amount that is alien to the Bible, such as the aspect of God as a great loving Father, with no power or holiness about Him, and when we come to the stern statements about the Cross of Jesus and the denunciations of sin, we shall have no affinity with them, but we shall preach “smooth things” (Isaiah 30:10).
Although Jeremiah seems to deal in volcanic destructions, a little spring of the clear pure water of life is always revealed that is a great strengthening to God’s children. We do live in times of devastation, war and calamities, but those who know God have this consolation, that in and above all these calamities God is working out His purposes absolutely undistressed, and although clouds and darkness are around, they know that the clouds are but the dust of His feet. “The joy of the lord is your strength, ” not our joy in God, but the joy of God; our strength is in the fact that we know God rules and rejoices. The Divine sovereignty of God allows Satan liberty and human beings liberty, and the margins of that liberty are known only to God.
To remember that the devil is not the power behind God, but a power allowed by God, makes a great difference in our attitude to the happenings of life. Jeremiah points out that all the calamities need never have been participated in by the house of Judah if they had only obeyed God. It is not a question of Jeremiah saying to Jerusalem, Go and ask God to wash you; he says, “O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved” ( Jeremiah 4:14). We are always caught up with the trick of asking God to do what we have to do. Never give way to reverie, imaginations, or thinking over which you have no control; to do so is the surest way to slip into a relapse.
God brings us to the point where the fortress of the will is stormed by Him. If we yield, the battle is fought and won; but if we don’t keep on the fighting line God has drawn, we shall suffer a relapse and be taken by storm by the very powers we ought to have overcome, e. g. , vain imaginings about God, empty moonings, spiritual reveries, spiritual ecstasies, spiritual anythings that we have not gripped up. The call comes strongly, “Wash your heart” and don’t allow vain thoughts to lodge in you. Few of us realise the power God has given us to grip on the threshold of the mind as in a vice the things that ought not to be there.
Jeremiah says he can hear voices of calamity— “watchers from a far country, ” and it will be worse for Judah than for Israel because “She hath been rebellious against Me, saith the lord” (see 4:15–17). It is quite easy as a disciple to be in agreement with the Lord over everything but His personal authority. Our Lord bases the final destiny of His disciples on their relationship to His personal authority and to nothing else (cf. Matthew 7:23). Beware of exploiting the Lord to suit your temperament. A true servant of God if he sees we are not submitting to the authority of the Lord Jesus, will produce all kinds of alarms—”I can see ‘watchers’ coming here and there and before you know where you are you will be dragged down. ” If we say, “You are talking nonsense, ” we shall go down, caught in the dust and anguish and frantic turmoil of besetting calamity.
Calamities that leave us bitter are deserved some- where. When disasters choke the heart, and paralyse all goodness, there is one fact more in the past that will explain them. “Thy way and thy doings have procured these things unto thee” (4:18). Infatuation is the affectionate insanity of a wrong relationship allowed. Paul is strong on this line—he calls it “inordinate affection. ” God never allows the danger of an infatuation without a tremendous warning, and if we persist we shall go headlong to destruction.
I am pained at my very heart; . . . I cannot hold
my peace. (4:19)
Desperate tides of the whole great world’s anguish
Forced thro’ the channels of a single heart.
F. W. H. Myers
This is one of the great moments in Jeremiah’s life, his identification with God and His point of view is clearly brought out. The same thing is stated in Romans 9:3 and Colossians 1:24. On the human side it seems an utter waste of grief; Jeremiah has agonised over the calamities that are going to over- take God’s people because of their rebelliousness, but all his weeping did not alter it; seen from God’s standpoint, it is a portrayal of the cost to God in His own heart when His people turn away from Him.
Destruction upon destruction is cried. (4:20)
When calamities are sent for wrongdoing they never stop until they are done. The old superstition that grief never comes single-handed, is based on a great fundamental fact, but the sad thing is that calamities have no business in the life of God’s children. If any, knowing better, step aside from God by rebel- lion, calamities will come exactly like a broken-down mill dam—turmoil after turmoil, destruction after destruction, the only thing to do is to return and get out on to the bank, otherwise destruction is as inevitable as that God is on His throne.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 5 December 1936 no . 9
notes on Jeremiah
“Lo, there was no man”
Jeremiah 4:23–5:6
Lo, there was no man. . . . Seek . . . , if ye can find a man. ( Jeremiah 4:25; 5:1)
As disciples of Jesus Christ, we must learn to brood on the terrible things revealed in the Bible, and made known to us in Christian service, until the Spirit of God exults in and through us because we have discerned God’s meaning. Life is tragic, and we must get out of our glib notions. We drift into the line of good taste and civilised preaching and a winsome personality, and when we come to the truth of the Cross of Christ, we are in a totally other world, and if the world revealed in the Bible is a true world, most of us live in a fool’s paradise. The views expressed in the Bible are always intense, but never exaggerated.
They are the statements of what human life is in the sight of God. It is so much easier to do Christian work than to be concentrated on God’s point of view. The reason of discouragement is because we do not brood on God’s point of view, or take time to under- stand what the Cross of Christ means. The Cross of Jesus Christ is not a martyrdom, it does not procure salvation; it is the only salvation.
1. The Vision of the Last Man ( Jeremiah 4:23–31)
I beheld, and, lo, there was no man. ( Jeremiah 4:25)
In verses 23–31 Jeremiah tells what he sees in the spirit; he is not piling up metaphors to terrify him- self and others. He sees bursting over Judah a visitation of God that convulses the whole earth, and in his brooding and insight before God he sees himself as the “last man. ” When once you have been scrutinised by the Spirit of God you are the “last man” on earth in your experience—there is no comfort in friendship, no beauty in the earth, no confidence anywhere. It is a terrible stripping to stand face to face with Jesus Christ, everything is consumed. No man can stand before God unless God be in him. The final judgement in individual life is at the Cross of Jesus Christ, and through that Cross can go no benefit, no beauty, no blessing, no health. The Cross is God’s last word: at the Cross the prince of this world is judged; at the Cross we are born from above (rv mg), and at the Cross we go through our final judgement. That is why so many workers will end in disaster; we do not want the Cross of Christ, we do not want God’s judgement, and when we come face to face with crime we are shocked and slander God because we have never brooded on the facts of life as God reveals them in His Book. The Cross of Christ means that sin must die in us or the life of God must die in us, individually and in the world. “For thus saith the Lord, The whole land shall be a desolation” (4:27 rv). The basis of life on earth apart from God is chaos. When once we see that all the complacencies of life, of Christian service, are built on chaos that will go into corruption, we shall understand why the Cross of Christ figures what it does. It is not a complete evolution, it is a Cross that knocks every- thing out saving God’s purpose for man. Take it in our own spiritual experience, how much gets through to God? Nothing but our life, no health, no wealth, no possessions, no virtues, only our life, and if we are wedded to the other things we shall end in destruction. No whining and no shirking will ever help us to escape the utter confusion that is at the basis of every bit of human life that has ignored God. There is only one thing that will stand—our soul and God. Beware of being misled by strong individual preachers, strong individual work; if they don’t lead to God direct, they may lead to perdition. The moments are rare, but they do come, when God wants us to stand alone with Him, and we get terrified. If once God can get us to stand alone with Him, He can trust us any- where on earth; but until He gets us there we never can be trusted. We are misled by the idiosyncrasies of great preachers; they put before us fine conceptions, but they do not leave us face to face with God.
2. The Valley of the Lost Man ( Jeremiah 5:1–6)
Seek . . . , if ye can find a man, if there be any that doeth justly . . . (5:1 rv)
Have you found a man or woman of God on whom you can depend? If you have, you are blind. There is none! Don’t glory in man, for the best of men are but the best of men; bank on God alone. We are captivated by strong personalities and if they don’t leave us with Jesus Christ they take us to hell. You cannot find a man anywhere on this earth whom you can trust; the only thing you can trust in yourself and in other people is what Jesus Christ has been allowed to do. Many of us win to ourselves, not to Jesus Christ. “The people have no Bible but they have us. ” It is true, but it is a perilous line. In preaching to the world, Jesus says, “Lift Me up. ” You will never find a man according to God’s own heart until you become one yourself, then you can be trusted with the sight, for you won’t bank on him.
When you come across these truths you go through the panic of the last Judgement here, but then it won’t be in death or the world, the flesh or the devil to turn you. There is nothing to terrify the man who knows Jesus Christ, not only what He can do, but Himself.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 5 January 1937 no . 10
notes on Jeremiah
Masked Perils
Jeremiah 5:7–21
The Bible is not so much a revelation about God as a revelation of God who is adequate to deal with the worst. Holiness is the moral power of God, and the Bible manifests that the moral power of God must act and act until it is everywhere.
1. Debasing Religious Ideals ( Jeremiah 5:7–9)
These verses are shocking, and are meant to be. This debasing of religious ideals is simply the re-emphasis of the great law of our human nature, viz. , that religious emotions die in degradation unless carried out on their own high level. Beware of ever saying to yourself, “God’s law is not exactly binding to me, I am under grace. ” To be under grace should mean that we can fulfill the law of God gracefully. Loyalty is the outcome of personal devotion to a person, and religious disloyalty grows into us from outside observances that are not the outcome of devotion to God.
2. Disowning Religious Instruction ( Jeremiah 5:11–13)
The false prophets comforted the people in their vain belief; such prophets become “wind”; they speak from themselves, and the emptiness of their prophecies falls upon their own heads. Jeremiah states that God’s omnipotence will not enforce moral truth upon an unwilling mind; there must be an open mind and heart before the truth of God can be received. A scaled mind refuses to be instructed, and a prejudiced mind can only see along the line of its prejudices. Beware of saying, “I will never be in that state of mind. ” Any state of mind possible to any human being is possible in every human being.
3. The Prophet’s Power ( Jeremiah 5:14)
This great verse reveals God’s seal on the prophet who speaks from Him and His judgement of the false prophets who speak from themselves. The voice of God reveals that He is an atmosphere of righteous fire, and as in Isaiah, so in Jeremiah, the tumbling and turmoil in human history is caused everywhere by the consuming fire of God rather than by the futile rage of the devil. In reading history the saint sees that the great presence and power is God, not the devil. That God is a consuming fire means that He burns and burns until there is nothing left to burn.
4. The Providence of Peril ( Jeremiah 5:15–17)
Hordes of barbarians and powers of worldly dominion are unconscious of God, but God uses them for His own purpose. Nothing happens by chance. When our Lord stood before Pilate He said, “Thou couldest have no power at all against Me, except it were given thee from above” ( John 19:11). The tyranny of the Roman Empire over God’s people was the providential order of God, and Jesus recognised that this was so, He did not start a revolution, or say, “We must fight against this” (cf. John 18:36). Perils are clear to God’s mind alone, but they mean panic to everyone who does not know the mind of God. So here Jeremiah reveals that behind all is God’s hand. Never take your participation in the perils of providence unintelligently, but get the mind of God.
5. Purpose in Pain ( Jeremiah 5:18)
A great snare arises in history and in personal life when we mistake the effects for the cause. In personal life conscience tells us that the cause of calamity lies in a self-indulgent heart. We say, “I don’t know why I lost my temper, or why I spoke so hastily. ” We do know, or we can know. Never mistake the effect of the physical condition for the cause of why we went wrong. We went wrong because the great atmosphere of the fire of God was consuming in us the things that were wrong. They are unrecognised and unrealised, but when the material circumstances come—the world, the flesh and the devil—down we go, and we say, “If only we had been warned we would have stood. ” But we would not. It is only when conscience has recognised that God is a consuming fire that we stand unperturbed, sure overcomers for God. In verse 18 Jeremiah reveals that God is a holy God, Who will not allow His people to remain unholy.
There is a lesson in every circumstance for the life that is hid with Christ in God which no one else can understand, and which we can only be instructed about from the inside. We learn the marvellous truth that we may become more than conquerors through our right relationship to God over everything that may come against us.
6. The Price of Petulance ( Jeremiah 5:19)
Serving strange gods in God’s house—the inevitable result is that we shall be taken out of God’s house and made drudges in the lands of our idols. Self-will in the worship of God will mean a slavery to selfishness that must be destroyed.
7. Persistence in Perversity ( Jeremiah 5:21)
“Hear now this, O foolish people, and without under- standing; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not. ” In the centre of the retina there is one spot where there are no nerves for conveying waves of light. Perversity means a spiritual blind spot. There is one spot at the background of our lives, which, whenever it is faced by God’s truths we do not see. Isaiah and Jeremiah treat spiritual blindness as culpable. The blindness of ignorance and the blindness of perversity are two different things. The blindness of ignorance says, “I do not see that yet. ” The attitude of the saint is, “I must wait over that before God”— absolutely free from perversity, he has no other end to serve but God’s end, which is a coming into more light. Perversity is always back and if it is persisted in it means that God is blotted out of His heaven for us.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol . 5 February 1937 no . 11
notes on Jeremiah
The city of dreadful night
Jeremiah 5–6
The study of Jeremiah brings us face to face with the great Bible truth that a nation is judged by its ideals rather than by its achievements. This is also true of individual life. “So-and-so is a good man, therefore he is all right”—there are whole areas of pathetic personal sentiment which blot Jesus Christ’s standards out of the standards of men.
1. Everybody’s Doing It ( Jeremiah 5:25–31)
The universality of sinning is one of the great facts revealed in God’s Book. Unless we see this, we will never understand the need for the Cross of Christ. If it is possible for there to be sin but no sinning, then the Atonement is unnecessary. The terrible truth that the man of sin is born from the bosom of sanctification is one that is always ignored outside God’s Book. The sin of a heathen nation never comes anywhere near the sin of what we call a Christian nation.
(a) The Propagation of Super-Sinners (5:26–27)
Whenever God talks about sin, He always makes its setting His own people. “For among My people are found wicked men. ” Jeremiah is talking on the line that they, as the people of God, have fostered super-sinners, the like of which have not been seen on the earth before. To-day there are books known and revered by many which are a cultured snare to get Christians away from the one great standing in Christ Jesus. Sin, blasphemy and perditious acts are only possible in a community God has blessed. I am either producing fruit to the glory of God, or I am turning myself into a son or daughter of perdition. Judas and John are both productions of the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
(b) The Prosperity of Sleek Selfishness (5:28–29)
Prosperity that does not spring from a godly motive is the external sign of having forsaken God. That is a charge that touches the very centre of modern philanthropy. We are philanthropic, not because we are godly, but because it is a much more prosperous game; righteousness in God’s sight never troubles us. Unless we are rightly related to God, nearly all our works have the sign of the prosperity about them of God having left us alone. God will never allow a child of His to prosper on that line. The one thing that matters is our motive before God.
(c) The Perversity of Successful Sinning (5:30–31)
Perversity is often full of wonder and prosperity before men, but horribly hideous before God. “A wonderful and horrible thing is come to pass in the land; the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means” (rv). The prophets prophesy falsely, they prophesy differently from the men of God, and the priests manipulate their work among the people under the direction of the false prophets, “and My people love to have it so, ” because no holiness is demanded, and Jeremiah asks, “What will ye do in the end thereof ? “
The most fruitful stock of anti-Christian heresy starts from the worship of healthy-mindedness. This is emphasised again by Paul. Paul will never have the kind of preaching that does not declare the holy demands of a holy God.
That is the thing we detest—that God is holy. Tell us God is loving, but do not tell us He is a holy God; we hate that, and that is the one thing that makes the heart of man rage against Jesus Christ. It is not with the gross, vile sins that you will find the problem, but with the refined, cultured, intellectual living, religious to the last degree. Put the standard of Jesus Christ before that good taste, that good living, good uprightness, and you will begin to see what the profound hatred of man is like against the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the problem we have to face to-day, and we must not live in a fool’s paradise. 2. Everybody’s Done by It ( Jeremiah 6:1–8) Sin swindles, riddles and destroys everything and everybody that touches it.
(a) The Summons to Anyone (6:1)
“If any one of the children of Benjamin hear the summons, let him answer. ” The summons of God seems to come in the most irresponsible ways and is accompanied by these words, “If any man hear My voice. ” Whenever God’s call enters into your life and mine, it is for us to listen. We have nothing to do as to whether other people have heard it or not. We can- not answer God’s call collectively (cf. John 6:68–70). Never get disturbed out of hearing God’s voice by saying other people have not heard it.
(b) Surrounding by Antagonism (6:2–6)
When anyone is right with God, there is the fascination of the power and Spirit of God through them that is attractive; it is a beautiful, a fascinating, win- some, wonderful thing, and gets hold of men, good, bad and indifferent, and the devil alike; but if once the individual saint forgets the source from whence it comes, God will curse the beauty. Beware that God’s beauty which He puts on you His saint, is not prostituted to a flirtation with God’s antagonists.
(c) The Stagnation Anathematized (6:7–8)
Cities are the “cisterns” of the modern world and an illustration of Jeremiah’s meaning. It is more difficult and creditable to live a godly life in a village than in a city, because in a village you have everything open and in the city you have everything artificial. A city man is narrow-minded, everything is protected for him. The place where God is most ignored and everything goes on with satisfaction is a city. In the city other things beside spirituality will succeed; in the country the only thing that will prosper is the worship of the God Who loves the earth. The black belief is always produced in the city. In order to make proper changes in a nation’s life, you must change the people’s wants. Our Lord alters the “want, ” and consequently the whole life is simplified. We are so given up to material prosperity, the things that are of use, but when the primal sacrifice exhibited in a man like Scott is seen, it has the effect of simplifying the wants of the people for a time. Verses 8–15. Jeremiah realises that the people can- not hear God’s Word, therefore it is vain to speak warning to them, for you can never warn a pleased person. Satisfaction in any shape or form is impregnable to warning; personal uprightness is always alert to the voice of warning.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 5 March 1937 no . 12
notes on Jeremiah
The city of dreadful night
(Continued)
Jeremiah 6
Therefore I am full of the fury of the Lord . ( Jeremiah 6:11)
Fury means the fundamental wrath of God against sinners, and that wrath is at the basis of everything that is not right, especially in those men and women who have perverted God’s way. Jeremiah was a pent-up channel of the fundamental wrath of God, and he says there is no alternative but to pour it out—”I am weary with holding in. ” There are certain characteristics in people’s lives that must mean hell, and about which we must warn them (cf. Ezekiel 3:17–21). The danger is to mix our personal spite with the fury of the Lord. When his realisation of the fury of the Lord was at its height, Jeremiah let it out; others preferred to preach “peace” symptoms—”saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace” ( Jeremiah 6:14). “They treat the healing of the hurt of My people as a trifling, temperamental matter; there is no such thing as the grace of shame amongst them. ” The majority of people do not see what is wrong, and the talk of a prophet like Jeremiah is nonsense. We never can face the things that are wrong, apart from God, without getting insane. If sin is a trifling thing and we can preach to the healing of people and bring peace on any other line, then the tragedy of the Cross is a huge blunder. To live a life hid with Christ in God means we see at times what men and women are like without God, from God’s standpoint, and it also means vicarious intercession for them, while they look upon us with pity.
1. The Fear of the Past
Thus saith the Lord , Stand ye in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. (6:16)
The ideas of men are in connection with what is before us, but the ideas of God are always from the past. The fighting quality of ungodly human nature is the frightened attitude of those who refuse to look back. Have you ever noticed the forced gaiety of a bad person, of someone who has something they want to cover up? The audacity of the whole thing is fundamental fright; it is the fear of the past. “I will do anything you like, but don’t let me think about the past. ” We do not want to be forgiven; we want to forget, because we are cowards.
2. The Fruit of Thoughts Behold,
I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts. (6:19)
“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he. ” “Our thoughts pilot our lives, our actions follow. ” Our thoughts are like the power of the engines in a steamer; if the pilot on board is in agreement with the engineer, they go steadily in one direction. If my thoughts are right, I am going steadfastly to God’s destination for me. We have to guard our fundamental thoughts and be renewed in the spirit of our mind and fitted in to God’s purpose.
3. The Fact of the Broken Heart
Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing unto Me. (6:20 rv ) “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit” (Psalm 51:17)—
that of a spirit God has made glad by a great forgiveness. The sign of this kind of broken heart is that the saint is untroubled by storms, and undismayed by bereavement because he is confident in God.
4. The Fundamental Stumbling-Block
Therefore thus saith the Lord , Behold, I will lay stumbling-blocks before this people. (6:21)
If there were no holy God, unholy people would not stumble. What is the line of my thinking—comfort, prosperity, peace? Then God, the holy God, will be a stumbling-block to me. People are departing, not from religious creeds, but from the moral standard of God. That is what the innate rage is against—that God requires us to be holy as He is holy, perfect as He is perfect, pure as He is pure. To-day the tendency has got hold of people, and they do not know where it started from, to discard the standards Jesus Christ erected. The great stumbling-block in modern spiritual life is our Lord Himself in His character, and in the demands the Spirit of God makes. If God would only stop being holy, stop demanding personal holiness, bodily and mental chastity, we would be happy. Yes, but on the way to hell. It is God who puts the stumbling-blocks; they are not there by accident, and the stumbling over them awakens us; if we go on perpetually stumbling, we shall ultimately break our necks. The truth of God always brings us face to face with the standard revealed in our Lord Jesus Christ.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 6 April 1937 no . 1
notes on Jeremiah
Re Probate
Jeremiah 6
They are all grievous revolters. . . . Refuse silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them. ( Jeremiah 6:28, 30)
1. The Problem of Providence ( Jeremiah 6:22–23)
Providence is God’s oversight and in-ruling of the men on this earth, and men without the Spirit of God alternately disbelieve and hate the providence of God. The natural heart hates God’s rule because it is unknown, we do not see what God is driving at, we cannot see why we should be disciplined. When we have the Spirit of God we do not understand what God is doing, but we know God. Faith is the process by which our confidence is built up in a Per- son Whose character we know, however perplexing the present things may be that He is doing. Fate is superstitious yielding to a person whose character we do not know and have not the slightest confidence in but have succumbed to. A stoic is a fatalist, he succumbs to an unknown ruling; a saint is one who lives amongst earth’s troubles and trials with a passionate joy the stoic knows nothing about. In reading the writings of the stoics we are apt to be misled for a time because they say the same things as Christians, but from a different standpoint. The truth behind the picture which Jeremiah gives in verse 23 is that the cruelty and mercilessness is not only allowed by God, but is actually being used by Him as a means, and that God is not perplexed as we are by the terror of His providence to those who do not know Him. Providence can never be interpreted reasonably; it can only be understood supernaturally.
2. The Perils of Panic ( Jeremiah 6:24–26)
The terror of panic is as certain as God’s rule to every man who sides with the corruptible things. God’s providential terrors recognise no favourites. If a child of His clings to the edge of a volcano, that child will come to grief as surely as those who do not care for God. The child of God must be with the God of terror, then he will be kept till the indignation be overpast, for God can never be shaken (see Hebrews 12:29).
If we cling to things that are going to be shaken, then God will not prevent us being shaken with them, until we learn to let go of everything that He has condemned. We must be burned as fiercely pure as God is pure, and God will not leave us alone until we are. There is a difference between looking at God in the light of “love is God, ” and seeing Him in the light of “God is love. ” God is holy love, and nothing that is corruptible can come anywhere in His presence, it has to be burned and blazed right out of us. Jeremiah’s identification with the people is the most wonderful evidence of his vicarious attitude in God’s service (see Jeremiah 6:11).
The servants of God have to be careful that they do not introduce any personal vindictiveness into the wrath of God, and here though Jeremiah stands with the people who are being swept away by God, he does not slander God by taking the people’s point of view. When standing as God’s mouthpiece, we must never do what Dante did, put our pet enemies in the hottest places. And when we stand with the people, we must not accept their slander against God. A prophet stands mid- way, not as a mediator, but as a director. Jeremiah states that there is no refuge anywhere (see 6:25–26)—retreat if you must, but you will retreat into deeper terror. How much of our security and peace is the outcome of the civilised life we live, and how much is built up in faith in God? When a soul stands face to face with God, there is no refuge apart from God, it simply prepares for itself another terrible moment later.
Let us take a revision of where our faith is built, is it built on our godly surroundings, on the order of things that has gathered round about us? If it is, when God’s providence allows the shattering blow of an enemy to come upon all these things, then we shall be full of fear. When we stand face to face with God, we are at our final judgement—no refuge any- where, no advice from friends, nothing at all can shelter then, there is nothing but ourselves and God (cf. Romans 8:1). The history of this in a human soul is a wonderful way of seeing how God works in the world.
3. The Process of Perfection ( Jeremiah 6:27)
If God were to manifest Himself suddenly to us we would be His slaves, witless, fascinated off our balance; but He wants us to come to Him with a perfect understanding of Who we are coming to and why. When we trust God we suffer with joy because we know that every bit of God’s truth is going to be as gladsome a delight to us as the little bit of truth we already know is. All the terrors of God’s processes in history do not alarm us, because the one bit we do know personally about God is so ineffably full of light and joy; therefore we can wait in patience. If a man does not know God, suffering makes him a revolter.
4. The Position of the Reprobate ( Jeremiah 6:29–30)
Every confidence, every love, every devotion that is not based on a personal relationship to God will be reprobate, not only in the experience of the individual, but in the history of the world. God will demonstrate to us in His patient way that if we are building on anything less than Jesus Christ it will prove use- less, because we have banked on the wrong thing (see 1 Corinthians 3:10–15; 9:27).
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 6 May 1937 no. 2
notes on Jeremiah
Degraded Devotion
Jeremiah 7
herefore will I do unto this house, which is called by My name . . . as I have done to Shiloh. ( Jeremiah 7:14) To seek a place instead of a Person is the first peril in the spiritual life, and to sentimentalise over places where God has met you is the beginning of spiritual twist. Beware of relying on a principle saving you from moral wrong, for it never can. A personal relationship to a personal Saviour is the only power that can shield the soul from moral peril. The golden rule is, my personal Saviour in every place, not that in certain places I meet my Saviour.
1. A Different Standpoint ( Jeremiah 7:1–2)
In chapters 4–6 Jeremiah stood in the market-place in Jerusalem and talked moral talk to the people; now he takes his stand at the gates of the temple, and the governing idea of what he says is that reality must be at the back of ritual, or else ritual will land the soul in perdition. Remember, the temple of God to-day is the human body, and unless its health is based on the worship of God, its very health will prove its perdition. It is not true that bad men get diseased bodies, it is the saints like the Apostle Paul, whose bodies are so frail that they have learned that their physical health is a mere case for God’s service through their soul. Consequently when anyone has learned, whether by suffering or by direct intimation from God, that physical health depends on relationship to God, then God can remove them when He likes. A bad man goes on living long after God has departed from him. Self-deception always arises by ignoring the personal relationship to God, a relationship based on the forgiveness of sin and nothing else.
2. A Discriminating Scrutiny ( Jeremiah 7:3)
Amend your ways and your doings. Whenever our spiritual insight outstrips our practical doings, we are on dangerous ground, for God never gives genuine illumination apart from practical goodness. The only way to keep right with God is to walk in the light. The pure in heart are the only ones who see God, and no one is pure in heart who has not received absolution from sin through the Atonement. If we are spiritual, God will dry up the fountains of illumination from other sources, and if we seek for illumination elsewhere, as these people did, we shall be led astray. It is quite easy to get insight and illumination and direction elsewhere, there are other forces eager to direct us and to direct us more cheaply, but God’s direction can never be bought. When you come up against a spiritual wall, thank God (Isaiah 50:10–11).
3. A Drastic Scathing ( Jeremiah 7:4)
When there is moral wrong in a man who is susceptibly religious, he will get more and more religious. The more moral rottenness, the more exciting is the appeal. Beware that the excitement of the flesh does not simulate spiritual earnestness, for sensual excess is never so full as when it is devotional. If you are a preacher, beware of being carried away by emotion, by an unbalanced sensibility about something—an appeal to the senses or affections that is not rightly rooted and established in a personal relationship to God; the more rotten that balance gets, the more passionately inspiring is the appeal. Look into your own soul and ask yourself when you prayed most passionately, when you were nearest to God or farthest from Him? When did your prayers take on the passion that appealed to other people? When you were farthest away, not when you were nearest. When you are nearest to God the flesh has no chance to magnify itself, it is a communion. The stamp of public prayer that Jeremiah condemns and ridicules is the prayer with the impassioned appeal that exactly fits people who want the false prophet. It was because these people had swept away the reality of religion that they had got into this security for sensual sins while they developed ritualistic worship. Our relationship to God is the one thing we have to watch. Beware of fleshly sentiment taking its revenge in making you publicly sincere when you are not profoundly real.
4. A Denouncing Sermon ( Jeremiah 7:7–8)
To apply Jeremiah’s words in our dispensation, read the Sermon on the Mount. Stealing, murder, immorality may never be performed physically, but a vestige of thinking along that line, Jesus says, is as bad in God’s sight. Human nature hates God’s message that there is a bad tendency inside that has to be plucked out, and unless it is it will damn us. It is extraordinary that although this truth is insisted on all through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, it is the one thing we do not believe. It is this underlying thought of God’s Redemption that human nature hates.
5. A Degenerate Service ( Jeremiah 7:10–11)
Will ye . . . come and stand before Me in this house which is called by My name and say, We are delivered, that ye may do all these abominations? (rv) We never get to a place where we are not liable to do this. We pray to be delivered from a calamity so that we may do what we like. The miracle of forgiveness means the miracle of a holy life. Self-examination is the only exercise for a soul who would remain true to the light of God. It is not the place, and not sanctimonious drivel, or anything less than a personal relation- ship to Jesus Christ that holds us right. The hardest thing in a saint’s life is to maintain a simple belief in Jesus until he realises the one relationship is—my Lord and I; then His joy will be fulfilled in us.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol . 6 June 1937 no . 3
notes on Jeremiah
The cup of the lord and of devils
Jeremiah 7:16–34
Truth is perished. ( Jeremiah 7:28) 1. Moral Impossibility ( Jeremiah 7:16–20) It is a moral impossibility for a godly man to commit a sin, for when a man sins in that degree he is a sinner, not a godly man (1 John 3:9). God’s forgiveness is a miracle, and it is the Atonement only that makes it possible.
(a) Prohibited Intercession (7:16)
That there is a sin unto death is a fact revealed in God’s Word, and its nature is returning persistence to wrong of which one has been convicted (1 John 5:16). Intercession must never spring from pity, but from the perfect Atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ. To pray for a sinner on the ground of Christ’s redemption is not intercession, but a prayer that God will in His mercy bring that man to salvation. Intercession is only possible in the Holy Ghost, and God can never forgive a sinner unless he repents the repentance wrought by the Atonement. Intercession can only be in the Holy Ghost, i. e. , in accordance with the mind of God. The liberty and the hindrance is only known to the child of God.
(b) Provoking Indecencies (7:17–19)
How can God forgive us if we persist in our sins? If God can save us while we persist in doing those things, He ceases to be a God worth worshipping. Sin must be damned, and if we stand with sin we shall be damned too. Jesus Christ’s salvation is the destruction of the sinner in the man, not of the man. A spiritual indecency is a compromise with a being less than God that we may prosper. If God calls us to recklessly trust Him, do we still lay hold of something that keeps us in with another power as well in case God fails? If we are going on with God we must stand alone. A man who does the thing that is lawful as a natural man prospers, but if he becomes spiritual and does it, God will curse everything he possesses. Apply this individually and collectively. God will make known to us clearly the impossible tracks of conduct, that we may avoid them.
2. Mental Iniquities ( Jeremiah 7:21–28)
Mental iniquities on the part of God’s children arise when a symbol is separated from the reality it is meant to bring near.
(a) God Careless of Sacrifices (7:21)
In Israel sacrifices were of two kinds—first, the burnt offering wholly consumed on the altar, and second, the peace offering of which only a part was burned, while the rest was eaten at a sacrificial meal by the offerer and his friends. Jeremiah says with scorn, “God says you are welcome to them both. ” When once religious rites cease to be the expression of spiritual realities, they become a curse.
(b) God Calling for Sanctification (7:22–23)
Commentators have said that sacrifices were not ordained by God—God gave the law and the people introduced the sacrifices. God ordained the sacrifices to be the symbolic expression of spiritual reality, and when the people took away the symbol from the reality God cursed it. “Whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:27 rv )—”unworthily, ” i. e. separating the symbol from the reality. The more inner corruption, the more strict the adherence to sacrificial systems.
(c) God Concerning Stubbornness (7:24–28)
Jeremiah says that God has been sending prophets to exhort and warn them, but they “will not” to hearken; they listen respectfully enough, but have no intention of obeying; it is a farce. All the counsels of their minds are according to the stubbornness of their own outlook (cf. Ezekiel 33:31–32). God is bent on our obedience; we are bent on earnest pretence. The only way to listen to the voice of God is to obey Him. God will never leave us long without the goad. The goads of God are the words of God, probing us into right roads.
3. Mystic Infidelities ( Jeremiah 7:29–34)
By mystic infidelities is meant the spiritual sentiments that refuse to wed themselves with God’s revealed will. It is the counterpart to spiritualism in spiritual life—communicating with generated sentiments of our own souls instead of bringing every sentiment we have to the bar of the will of God.
(a) Sign of Death (7:29) The only way to spiritual obedience and reality is the way across the life of nature.
(b) The Sorrows of Degradation (7:30–31) Every conscious physical possession, mental, moral and spiritual, that has not been disciplined by obedience to God, will drag down the personal life to unfathomable degradations.
(c) Shock of Doom (7:32–34) Jeremiah says all joy shall be dumb “for the land shall become a waste” (rv). All religion must be spiritual in its essence; bodily beauty, mental beauty, moral or spiritual beauty that has never been brought into subjection to God’s law and made spiritual, these very charms will end in a desolation of hell. Immediately we begin to substitute religious ritual for spiritual reality, we will incur in our manner and measure exactly what Jeremiah states here the people of Judah will inherit. Everything has to be turned into spiritual life by a process of obedience. The natural life in a child of God is a lamb for sacrifice, and we have to sacrifice it to the will of God until we turn it into a spiritual thing as Jesus sacrificed His will to the will of His Father.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 6 July 1937 no. 4
notes on Jeremiah
Eternal Insomnia
Jeremiah 8
And death shall be chosen. ( Jeremiah 8:3) Our Lord Jesus used these burning words, “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched, ” in refer- ring to the condition of people who deprive themselves of right judgement by persistently going wrong. (See 2 Thessalonians 2:11). In the prophecies of Jeremiah we have the same great revelation, that eternal issues are involved in temporal living, put in a different con- nection. If we are going to remain true disciples of Jesus Christ, we will have to remain alien to the day we live in.
1. “The Mills of God Grind Slowly” ( Jeremiah 8:1–3)
Such terrible suggestions as these verses contain serve as a very wholesome awakening, and bring men to the understanding of the need of Redemption. In God’s Book there is sufficient to indicate that there is not only a great deal more than we know, but that the only One Who knows about it is God Himself; and our Lord and the prophets occasionally draw the veil from what is behind the scenes of terror and anguish for lives that deliberately and emphatically reject the messages of God’s redemption in this life. Along these lines come God’s revelation facts about spiritualism.
The Bible calls spiritualism devilish reality. As a Christian, beware of putting any human experience down to superstition until you have been careful to find out what God’s Book has to say about it. These soul perils begin in our lives in palmistry, telling fortunes in teacups, or by cards. Curiosity is awakened and increased, and people degenerate their relationship to God into a spiritual séance. Once begin to tread that path, and nothing but God Almighty’s grace can save you from the unutterable curse of the crime of spiritualism. That is one thing as Christian workers we have to face in these days. Some men can do a thing with impunity, others are blighted for doing it; the reason being that there is a relationship from which the one has turned back and the other has never known. If a man or woman has known God and turned back, then the corresponding riot of calamity is in proportion; that is why comparing ourselves with ourselves, we do always err from the truth. The one relationship to maintain is the simple one towards God. Keeping that, it is life and peace and joy; outside that, it is terror and anguish wherever you may be found. The measure of my misery when I turn from God is proportioned to my knowledge of Him when I walked with Him.
2. “Yet They Grind Exceeding Small” ( Jeremiah 8:4–7)
The way of the transgressor is hard—until he persists in turning his will to the transgression, then he revels in it—”Why then is this people of Jerusalem slid- den back by a perpetual backsliding? “—and now it is not difficult for them to go dead against everything God has said. As in the days of Noah, so all through the Bible, when the signs of the times point to the coming of a great calamity, the majority are merely amused at the fools who believe it. The subject of the Second Coming is the one the average unholy Chris- tian cannot stand, and the tendency is to listen, as the people did in Jeremiah’s day, to the false prophets (2 Peter 3:3–6). 3. “. . . With Exactness Grinds He All” ( Jeremiah 8:8–13) Jeremiah says the pen of the scribes is false; he accuses them of expounding the Word of God in a lying manner, prophesying falsely. We have an exact counterpart to-day. The modern scholar pretends to be expounding the Word of God, but in reality he is writing with a lying pen, he builds his wisdom out of his own rationalism, and takes out of the law of God only what agrees with it. “The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken”—those who hold themselves wise shall be dismally deceived in their hopes when the great calamity comes upon the sin-hardened people. The way we get mystically infidel is when we allow sentiments in our spiritual life to be insubordinate to God’s writ- ten Word, vague speculations which we refuse to pin down to God’s law. These develop a sentimental view of God—”God knows how simple our hearts are, and these calamities will never come to us. ” But God’s Word goes through all those sentiments and points out directly where we went astray—there was one point where we would not obey the truth. Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel all say the same, that it is the prophet and the people together who corrupt one another. Paul says the same to Timothy—”For the time will come when they will not endure the sound doctrine; but, having itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts” (2 Timothy 4:3). It is true to our very doors to-day.
“And they have healed the hurt of the daughter of My people lightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace” ( Jeremiah 8:11). That is the perpetual peril at all times, relieving present pain by a temporal fictitious cure, when what is needed for an effectual cure is a surgical operation.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 6 September 1937 no . 6
notes on Jeremiah
Infatuation
Jeremiah 8:14–9:8
Infatuation is something that deprives us of right judgement and swings us right off our balance. Look back on your past history with God and you will see where you have been infatuated. The voice that speaks from God’s side is balanced by a thousand that speak on the other side. “And for this cause God sendeth them a working of error, that they should believe a lie” (2 Thessalonians 2:11 rv). That is the result of infatuation. Christians individually and collectively become infatuated when they think not of the Lord Jesus Christ as strange to this order in which we live—either He must be crucified or we must take up the cross. We have to face the world and life from God’s standpoint, to look at subjects that strike terror to our inmost souls. All Christians are not Christian workers, but those who are called to be workers need the courage of the Holy Ghost to face life from God’s standpoint. We have to keep our hearts and minds faced with the awful condition of human life apart from the Cross of Christ. We must get into our souls the iron of God which makes us strong enough to present Jesus Christ to men. A Christian worker does well to hold judgement in abeyance about themselves and about others when there is no genuine shame and repentance. God cannot forgive sin and remain God on any other footing than the atoning death of Jesus Christ.
1. Unreturning Grace ( Jeremiah 8:14–17)
We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of healing, and behold dismay! (8:15 rv) A surrender to the inevitable disaster of sin without any shame or self-blame is the first seal of doom. The infatuated mood, in which we think we are not to blame for the calamities that come upon us, is very common. Job was in no wise responsible for the calamities that came upon him; but here Jeremiah is stating that the calamities are because of the people’s sins. People bow inevitably to their sorrows, but never find out whether they are to blame. It is easy to drift right away from the Bible standpoint and from the cross of Christ by re-accommodating our faith to a spirit that hates Jesus Christ. The majority of us know nothing about shame and repentance, consequently we drift from the central point because we more easily get into sympathy with men than with God, and this is slander against God. To save the world cost Jesus Christ His life, and if we teach that the world can be saved in any other way we slander God. These people had generated their infatuated hopes on the preaching of the false prophets. Jesus Christ not only gives us ideals, but He shows us that men are incapable of attaining them, and He came that they might get there by the miracle of His grace. Other teachers never refer to the possibility of our getting there, and it is that kind of teacher we like. Men can never attain the ideal that God demands they shall attain, unless they attain it by regeneration through the cross of Christ; and that never comes in experience but by shame and repentance. Some people seem to be easily morally good, and we say, “Oh, they are all right. ” If they are all right, the cross of Christ is a farce. If natural virtue and natural goodness are really all right, then the cross is a sham, but immediately we come to see that the characteristics of the new life are based in our experience of shame and repentance we can always recognise these experiences. When we go down amongst men and women, let them be never so bad and degraded, we never can despair because, no matter how bad they may be, we know of a Saviour Who can save them.
2. Unrelieved Grief ( Jeremiah 8:18–22)
For the hurt of the daughter of My people am I hurt. (8:21) The people are not sad, they think the prophet has a dose of dyspepsia. Just before the judgement of God the majority of people are happy; they are infatuated. Standing in the courts of the temple Jeremiah is talking to a people battened in prosperity, but the prophet hears what is coming. Have we ever been through anything of that description? Have we ever been touched once with filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ? or are we caught up by the jargon of the modern spirit which is full of adversity to the cross of Jesus Christ? The idea is that if we are in joy and peace we are all right.
“Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword” said Jesus (rv). Verses 21–22 picture the prophet’s distress. He can find no comfort for his heart. The reason we do not suffer over other people is that we do not stand where Jeremiah stood. Some of us have a secret delight when people go down, though we do not say so. It crushed the heart out of Jeremiah because he saw them as the people of God. Jeremiah in the abandon of his grief wishes that he were nothing but a “fountain of tears”day and night because of the infatuated people (9:1). He had to min- ister to a people who became worse and worse because he ministered to them. It is incorporated into us, unless we are saturated with the Bible idea, that we succeed for God. In the New Testament there is no such notion, only faithfulness to Jesus Christ; success does not lie along His line. God has His own purposes which we do not know and have not to look for. We have to see that we keep steadfastly faithful to Him.
“Their tongue is a deadly arrow; it speaketh deceit” (9:8 rv). The characteristic of a child of God is that there is no deceit, nothing to hide from God (1 John 1:7). Never trust any man or woman, and never trust your- self, trust only the grace of God. As sure as we put our trust in man, no matter how good, we learn that the human heart is a cunning house of deceit. We all work for our own ends till we get into the light with God; then we have no end to serve, we are without guile. The only way to keep in the light is to remain true to Jesus Christ and not guard ourselves; let Him guard and let Him watch.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 6 November 1937 no. 8
notes on Jeremiah
Lachryma Christ
Jeremiah 9:9–26
Lachryma Christi is a wine of a sweet taste produced from grapes grown on Mount Vesuvius. The words literally mean “the tears of Christ. ” The symbolism is perfect to those who understand that the value of human life to God is that it produces the wine that He delights in. In these studies we are crushing through at all costs the views that have no home whatever in the Bible, and few, as workers, can stand the crushing until they get down to the Bible standpoint, from where they will never be budged again.
1. Desolation ( Jeremiah 9:9–11; Matthew 23:38)
Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Old Testament prophets are inseparable from one another, for in the Person and the teaching of our Lord all that the prophets taught is in part fulfilled, and will be completely fulfilled. Desolation wrought by God is the indelible proof that God is God, and a holy God. If we make our abode on the sides of a volcano, desolation may come at any minute. Keep in mind the continual interference of God in human life; that is the mental atmosphere of the Bible. Outside the Bible, people talk about the immanence of God—everything going on quietly and calmly and in order. It goes on tempestuously and crushingly. That is God’s order—revolution, around Himself as the central Being.
2. Discernment ( Jeremiah 9:12–16; 1 Corinthians 3:12–15)
Jeremiah states that wisdom and enlightenment are not to be found among the infatuated people, they have been swept away from right judgement by false prophets who taught that everything develops along a natural rational line. That was the infatuation in Jeremiah’s day, and in our own day the proclaimers of the truth of God are in the minority; men won’t listen to them. There are those who say there is no such thing as the supernatural incoming of Jesus Christ, either in history or in the human heart. Our Lord Jesus Christ is not Someone Who has sprung from human nature by evolution: He is Someone Who has come crushing into the human nature by the superb miracle of the Incarnation. The supernatural is the only explanation of our lives if we are right with God, and at any moment God may tumble our lives up as He likes. The question is, Are we willing to let Him? We have to maintain our personal relationship to God in Christ Jesus, no matter what happens. The one thing that is of value to God in a human life is a personal relation- ship of holiness to God, and every part of physical, mental, moral life and of Christian work that is not so related will be desolated and burnt as rubbish.
3. Dirge ( Jeremiah 9:17–22; Luke 6:24–26)
The characteristic of life to-day is that the gospel of “Cheer up, look on the bright side, ” is being preached on all sides. Our Lord says, in effect, that every happiness and peace and well-being that is based on the ignoring of a relationship to God will end in dirges and woes, disasters and terrors. Every now and again God lifts the veil from the eyes of His children and shows us the numbers in our own circle who are absolutely dead to God’s standpoint. It is these revelations that bring distress to the soul before God in intercession, and enable us to understand what Paul means when he says, “I . . . fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ” (Colossians 1:24 rv). We must stand with one camp or the other, we are either with God and the forlorn hope, or with the crowd who are going on without God, whose happiness and joy and prosperity is all fictitious.
4. Disquisition ( Jeremiah 9:23–24; 1 Corinthians 1:20–21)
The righteousness of God embraces the wise man, the mighty man, the rich man, and brings them into a new standpoint. Apart from God, it is man’s wisdom and man’s power, and man’s cunning commercial- ism that are gloried in. Think of the wise outlook on life that ignores the supernatural incoming of God in Christ, the supernatural Atonement, and the super- natural works of grace in experimental salvation and sanctification; compared with the shrewd wisdom of the world, these are nought. The wisdom of the wise is based on a rational explanation of everything, but “the foolishness of God is wiser than men. ” “Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? “
5. Discrimination ( Jeremiah 9:25–26)
“All the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart” (rv). They were circumcised by rite, but not in reality, therefore they are classed by Jeremiah with the heathen in this respect that they were devoid of all room for glorying in the sight of God. External religious rites divorced from spiritual reality, all through God’s Book, are revealed as the abiding stumbling-block to the real worship of God, whereas they should be a means of grace.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 6 December 1937 no . 9
notes on Jeremiah
Irreconcilable
Jeremiah 10:1–16
Every man is brutish in his knowledge. ( Jeremiah 10:14)
1. The Paralysis of Aspiring to Nirvana ( Jeremiah 10:1–5)
Nirvana is a Sanscrit word which means “a blowing out, ” like a candle. The abiding tendency of the experience in life without a personal knowledge of God is to become more and more convinced that individual life is a delusion. Spiritually it is made to mean that we have to lose ourselves in God. That is never taught in the Bible. Our type of life is the Lord Jesus Christ—a strong, vigorous, intense, separate Personality; He never lost Himself in God; and the one thing that the Holy Spirit does is to develop and increase the value of our personality to God. Verses 1–5 are a warning against idolatry because it leads to nothingness. If once we forget that God is holy, we will be inclined to pay attention to premonitions, to fatalistic notions. Jeremiah says, Have nothing to do with such things (10:2). Beware of every profession of wisdom that takes a line that leads away from the God whom Jesus Christ revealed. “Be not afraid of them” (10:5). We have to be shaken out of everything that awakens fear till we do not fear anything. “Therefore will we not fear, though . . . ” (rv ). A great part of our life is given over to fetishness, to our own ideas and conceptions, and we are terrified out of our wits by things we could name. God’s purpose is to get us to the place where Jesus was—unafraid, unafraid of death or of anything that is less than God. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. ” Unless our hearts are rooted and grounded in God, there are a thousand and one things that will awaken terror. Beware of everything that defaces your faith in God, and learn to welcome the manifestation of God that enables you to efface yourself in devotion to Him.
2. The Progress of Alone to the Alone ( Jeremiah 10:6–11)
The “aloneness” of God is a doctrine continually stated in the Bible. The Bible does not say that Nature is God, nor does it state anywhere that all will be absorbed into God. The Bible view of God is not being accepted to-day; we do not think of God as the Being presented in the Bible, our actions prove we do not; the things we are haunted by prove we do not; the way we don’t trust Him proves we do not. To have the conception clearly in our souls that God is a transcendent God must be wrought in us by the Holy Ghost. God created everything and upholds all things by the word of His power, and His nature is discerned by His handiwork, but that is a different thing from saying God is all.
God breathes into us the Holy Spirit Who energises our spirit, and we become eternally never God, but God’s lovers (see Romans 5:5). The Apostle Paul states that men are without excuse when they worship God’s work as God (Romans 1:25). Jeremiah 10:7–9. An idol, says Jeremiah, is itself “a doctrine of vanities. ” Paul states exactly the same truth for his dispensation, and it is the same to-day. To worship a work of God is blasphemy. “For that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie” (Romans 1:25 rv ). The ungodly disposition in a man makes him worship beings or things or ideas in order to render them powerless, and the same idea is apt to creep into the worship of God amongst Christians if not watched—”God will never let this or that come to me; I am a favourite of His. ” Jesus Christ’s life is an illustration as to how God will deal with us, He will not shield us from the world, the flesh or the devil, they are allowed to do their worst because God has staked His all on what He has done in us (see John 16:33; 1 John 4:4).
Trials and tribulations are trumpet calls to the witnesses to God. Beware lest Satan steals a march5 when the tribulations begin. Paul emphasises the fact that God is a sovereign Being, not a sentimental blessing. The Bible instils iron into our nature, it leaves none of the weak, sentimental things we hold in such esteem. The Bible is packed full of the most stern truths, yet it is any- thing but pessimistic. The Hebrew Scriptures know nothing about overwhelming sadness, they are optimistic. The modern Christian mind is not nourished with the Bible, it is nourished with conceptions that ignore Jesus Christ.
3. The Providence of Almighty God ( Jeremiah 10:12–16)
“Almighty God” means that there is no one or thing or force mightier. If you have ever been given the tiniest inkling of the meaning of what God said to Abraham, “I am God Almighty” (rv)—”El Shaddai, ” that moment will stand out in your experience infinitely more than your experience of sanctification or any other experience. One moment’s realisation that Almighty God is your Father through Jesus Christ, and I defy anything to terrify you again for long. If we realise, what these prophets realised, that nothing can happen without God’s permission, we are kept in peace. Worrying is wicked in a Christian. “Let not your heart be troubled. ” How dare we be troubled if Almighty God Who made the world and everything in it, is our Father? Why should we ignore God by worshiping what He has made, and then giving way to intellectual infidelity and sceptically doubting if He is wise and good at all? “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him”—God can do what He likes, I know it is all right, let happen what will.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 6 January 1938 no . 10
notes on Jeremiah
Correction
Jeremiah 10:17–11:8
O Lord, correct me, but with judgement. (Jeremiah 10:24)
The prayer is for chastening. When God seems to let the calamity fall on a good person, it leads to the salvation of a bad person. This is difficult to put in words. Correction is not for the detection of faults, but in order to make perfect. We cannot be made good as dogs are, our wills must share in the making. God does not make us good in spite of ourselves. The terrors of God arise when God puts His finger on a man or a nation to draw them out of darkness into the light. Those who take God’s way of coming into the light will find ultimately nothing but unspeakable joy and peace, life and love.
1. Weeping in Woe but Willing ( Jeremiah 10:17–25)
The prophecies of Jeremiah, like other truths of God, are addressed to the conscience and the will, not to the intellect or imagination. These verses are Jeremiah’s statement about the people coming slowly to understand God’s judgements.
(a) Violent Exile (10:17–18)
“Gather up thy bundle from the ground” (rv mg). Whatever in us can be or can make an adversary of God, whatever prevents us doing the will of God, must be got rid of. In Jeremiah’s day the people continually reverted to idolatry; after the captivity idolatry never appears again; when our Lord came it was the spirit of Pharisaism that He condemned. If we could get into God’s presence with any sin remaining, God would not be holy. There must be nothing to hide. Our difficulties arise because we do not realise this. We receive the light, but we won’t do what we ought, and God has to come with His inevitable compulsion—”Behold, I will sling out the inhabitants of the land at this time” (rv ). We have got to be holy some day, why not be holy now? God will not leave us until He has burnt everything that can be burnt out of us. We hinder Him, that is why He is so long.
(b) Vicarious Experience (10:19–20)
“Truly this is my grief, and I must bear it” (rv). Jeremiah did not stand aloof, he took on him the position of the people before God. The cause of the calamity was that “the shepherds are become brutish” (10:21 rv ), i. e. , they did not seek wisdom and guidance from God, so they could not deal wisely. No matter how moral we may be, every domain of our life that is not regulated by the direct application of the wisdom of God is brutish in God’s sight. What do we teach in our Sunday School classes, our Bible classes? what do we preach to our congregations? Do we teach and preach “brute” wisdom, or the wisdom of God through Jesus Christ? (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:30).
(c) The Voice of Earnestness (10:23–25)
Verse 23—”O Lord , I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps”—is a confession, not of sin, but of realised condition. Have we ever made that confession in our own souls before God? If we have, we know, and delight to know, that it is not within man’s power to arrange the course of his life. The test is, have we the childlike attitude towards God, are we always on the look-out for His supernatural working? Most of us are rationalistic infidels, we never think that God is supernatural at all. We rule out the miraculous and the supernatural because it is not according to the outlook of to-day.
2. Warning in Word, but Wilful ( Jeremiah 11:1–8)
The greatest obstruction to the working of God comes from those who give themselves to interpreting the words of God rather than doing them. “The word that came to Jeremiah from the lord . . . “—to proclaim we must have heard the word first. “And say thou unto them, Thus saith the lord. . . . ” The tendency is strong to let down and say, “God won’t be stern, He won’t expect you to give up all that. ” He will. “God does not expect you to walk in the light so that you have nothing to hide, ” but He does. We must see that we remain true to the revelation we have had, otherwise the condemnation will come on us that came on the false prophets of old. We are here for one purpose—to stand for the revelation of God’s truth to the people of God and to sinners. The tendency is to water down God’s truth in the case of some darling relationship and say God did not mean what we know He did. We must never shield a person from God’s truth; if we do, we put them into the dark and deepen their torture instead of their peace. “. . . which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt. ” The first view of God after experiencing His deliverance is the true one, don’t modify it. The modification comes in when the testimony partakes of the nature of—”Once I was delivered. . . . ” The New Testament bids us walk in the light, not remain in the house of memory and recall. When we were first delivered by God there was no one in the world for us then but Him, is there anybody now? The one great passion of heart and soul and body was for Jesus Christ, is it now? or are we beginning to modify things and make them more plausible and fitting to worldly customs and ideas?
It is one thing to claim a thing, but another thing to enter in on that claim. God wants us to possess. If a man acknowledges God’s voice, God will tax the very universe to enable him to obey. To get a glimpse only of what obedience means makes us say it is difficult: obedience is superbly easy because we have Almightiness on our side. Acknowledge God’s voice, take the step in the right direction and obey, and you will be backed by omnipotence in every detail.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol . 6 February 1938 no . 11
notes on Jeremiah
Misapprehension
Jeremiah 11:9–12:6
Let me reason the case with Thee. (Jeremiah 12:1 kjv mg) Misapprehensions of God arise from not under- standing that His way for us is obedience until we discern, not waiting to obey until we know. The only way to know God more fully is to obey what we have discerned, then we shall know something more.
1. Conspiracy against God ( Jeremiah 11:9–13)
The breach of faith towards the covenant of God is called by God a conspiracy—”the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken My covenant which I made with their fathers” (11:10). The Bible is the only Book that reveals a solidarity of evil, and this historical record is part of that revelation. In Ephesians 6:11–12 the Apostle Paul refers to the same underlying truth, that evil has not its birth in one man’s doing, but that it is diabolically easy for all men to do the wrong thing. If we will obey, we are backed by Omnipotence; but if once we begin to be cunning and suspicious and to doubt, we are backed by a diabolical inspiration as compelling on the wrong side as obedience is on the right. At the back of all are those two powers—God and the devil. When men state they cannot help doing wrong, they speak truly. It is as if all men and devils had met together and conspired against the Lord. Some such revelation is necessary before we discern what it was made the Cross of Jesus Christ necessary, viz. , a solidarity of evil which we know nothing about until we are born again of the Spirit of God. Freedom from guile, from reviling, from threatening (see 1 Peter 2:22–23)—never having any connection with the little steps in evil which connect us with the tremendous solidarity of evil which is a conspiracy against God and all God stands for. Watch every encroaching of suspicion, “Never believe the thing that ought not to be true, ” because if you do, you find you have a diabolical genius for doing it. Once begin to suspect, and you can suspect like the devil himself. Once imagine that people are beginning to overreach you and you will have a diabolical genius for seeing where they overreach you, and then you will begin to have the same view of God.
2. Condensed against Prayer ( Jeremiah 11:14)
The Lord will not only not receive any intercession for the covenant-breaking people, but He will not answer their own prayer for deliverance. “For I will not hear them in the time that they cry unto Me for their evil” (rv mg). It is as if God had condensed Himself into adamant. Unless we keep in touch with God by obedience it is possible to pray for a wrong thing. In this case the people have rebelled and do not intend to obey, they only pray because they are suffering, not because they want God’s will to be done in them.
3. Contempt for Holiness ( Jeremiah 11:15–17)
“What hath My beloved to do in Mine house, seeing she hath wrought lewdness with many? ” (11:15). A contempt for holiness is the outcome of preferring to listen in order to intellectually comprehend, combined with a stubborn refusal to obey (see Acts 7:51).
4. Conspiracy against Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 11:18–23)
The prophet had not known they had devised devices against him, but he says “the lord gave me knowledge of it” (rv ). Our Lord told His disciples that their oneness with Him would be recognised in the fact that they would be persecuted and hated as He was ( John 15:18–20). Fellowship with Jesus Christ means disaster in the eyes of the wisdom of the world.
5. Controversy with God ( Jeremiah 12:1–4)
The enmity which Jeremiah experienced from the people of Anathoth, his native place, causes him to expostulate with God and to demand that they be cut off out of the land—”pull them out like sheep for the slaughter. ” Think how easy it is to get into that mood!
6. Cumulative Adversity ( Jeremiah 12:5–6)
The Lord reproves Jeremiah for his outburst of impatience by telling him he must patiently endure worse. The bittersweet drop in the prophet’s cup had not yet been tasted, for he was to find that not only his own townsmen, but his own brethren and the house of his father, had dealt treacherously with him. A simple thing to have faith in God, isn’t it! It means steadfastly enduring, as seeing Him Who is invisible, and letting God work out His ways through you. “My Lord and I” is a very beautiful sentiment, but before we know it as a living experience we have to fight our way through all the contradicting things to the unafraid, simple life that trusts in God.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 6 March 1938 no . 12
notes on Jeremiah
Progressive realization
Jeremiah 12:7–17
I will return, and have compassion on them. ( Jeremiah 12:15)
Jeremiah begins to realise his own messages; he has experienced the correcting wounds of God, and it has had a very illuminating effect upon him. Few suffer more seriously in character than the men and women who for one reason or another are exempt from frank, honest criticism. That privileged lot is cruel in the extreme.
Progressive realisation does not mean that God reveals Himself by inches, but that we realise His revelation of Himself by inches as we obey.
1. Not a Divine Rescript but a Human Revolt ( Jeremiah 12:7–13)
Jeremiah realises that the sufferings and the judgements that are about to fall on the people of God are not a Divine rescript (i. e. , an edict or decree), but the result of that people’s revolt.
Mine heritage is become unto me as a lion in the forest: she hath uttered her voice against Me; therefore I have hated her. (12:8 rv )
God is expounding to Jeremiah, and through Jeremiah, and through to all time, if His people disobey and rebel, the result of God’s way of ordering things is inevitable. It is not a Divine edict, but the way God has constituted things. When self-realisation is accepted as the law of self, it becomes the enemy of the life of God. “Is mine heritage unto me as a speckled bird of prey? ” (rv). This is not a picture of a saint living a holy life in the world; it is the picture of a saint who is leaving God and going into the world, with the result that the birds of prey, i. e. those who have never recognised God, are tearing that life to bits, and God does not protect it. That is the thing that staggered Jeremiah. God is bringing him to see the reason: the people have rebelled against Him. If I backslide, I take some of the glorious plumage of the heritage of God with me, and as it gets bedraggled I am torn to pieces by the people who never knew Jesus Christ. “Many shepherds have destroyed My vineyard . . . No man layeth it to heart” (rv). God would have been “a wall of fire round about and . . . the glory in the midst” if they had been obedient. The difference between God as a consuming fire and natural fire is just this, that the further you get away from God the more fiercely you feel His burnings, but when you are close to Him, you will find it is a glorious protection.
2. The Divine Event to Which the Whole World Tends ( Jeremiah 12:14–17)
Thus saith the Lord against all mine evil neighbours, . . . Behold, I will pluck them up from off their land. (12:14 rv)
God is behind the devil; He is watching, and sees when the devil begins to gloat and attempt to interfere. An evil man or the devil himself can never hurt a backslider other than by God’s permission. “I will return, and have compassion on them” (12:15). That judgement and mercy are two phases of the same thing is part of the progressive realisation that men and women get as they walk in the light. The house of life has God at the back door and the front, if we bar both doors against Him, He will burst them open in mercy with a hurricane. When havoc is round about, men slander God, but havoc is the great presence of God working His own purposes. Everything is havoc but God and the man. “If they will diligently learn the ways of My people, . . . then shall they be built up in the midst of My people” (12:16 rv).
God created the people known as Israel for one purpose, to be His servants until through them every nation came to know God. Through every period they turned away from that preordained purpose because they wanted to be like other nations. This is the reason of all the judgements that paralysed Jeremiah. The truth about God is Jesus Christ—light, life and love. Whatever is dark to us will, by means of our obedience, become as clear as the truth which we have made ours by obedience. The bit we do know is the most glorious, unfathomable delight conceivable, and that is going to be true about everything to do with God and us. The process is continual obedience.
This world is for redemption, not for progress, and a Christian is one who has been taken into that secret by the personal experience of Redemption. It is a continual revelation centring round one thing, the Cross of God in Jesus Christ, and the characteristic is that we have to be crucified too, and live only the life “hid with Christ in God. “
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 7 April 1938 no . 1
notes on Jeremiah
Defacement
Jeremiah 13:1–17
. . . before He cause darkness . . . ( Jeremiah 13:16)
When a man is afraid of God the only right thing for him to do is to run straight to God and not wait to dress himself. The further we get away from God the more we want to dress ourselves up in prayer, etc. , but if we fly, just as we are, God will take us and remove the unclean thing.
1. Outward Perishing and Inward Corrupting ( Jeremiah 13:1–11)
Behold, the girdle was marred, it was profitable for nothing. . . . After this manner will I mar the pride of Judah, and the great pride of Jerusalem. (13:7, 9)
God created His chosen people for one purpose, not to be like other nations, but to be His servant until through them every nation should come to know Who Jehovah is. Israel continually “backed out” of God’s purpose for them. “And, behold, the girdle was marred. ” The mar- ring of the girdle has reference to the inward moral state of the people; the captivity has to do with the external state of the people. God did not send Israel into captivity, they put themselves there. They corrupted themselves inwardly first, they became as a dirty girdle—”This evil people . . . shall even be as this girdle, which is profitable for nothing” (rv ). The purpose of God in the captivity was to remove those who were evil from His people, preserving the remnant. The physical disappearance of the people is foretold in Leviticus 26; they perished outwardly because they had been corrupted inwardly. The inward corruption did not take place during the exile, but before; and because of the inward corruption they were taken into captivity. Verse 11 is a wonderful revelation of the heart of God towards His people—”that they might be unto Me for a people, and for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory [the counterpart of this verse is Deuteronomy 26:18–19, and this purpose is the explanation of the stern indignation of God against the stubbornness that seemed to thwart it]: but they would not hear. ” The Babylonish captivity put an end to idolatry for ever. When Our Lord came the people were guilty of Pharisaism. The characteristic of Pharisaism in Our Lord’s day was an intense hatred of idolatry (cf. Luke 11:24–26). Spiritually when an individual builds his confidence on anything less than God inevitably there will be a perishing of the ground of confidence. Experience is the door to a life. The wonderful thing about real living experience is that it is never referred to as past, but merely as the entrance into what is now enjoyed. Beware of building your faith on your experience of God’s grace instead of on God Who makes the experience possible. “Ye seek Me, ” said Jesus, “not because ye saw signs, but because ye ate of the loaves and were filled” (rv). “Put men’s bodies first, feed them, heal them, educate them, then they will make You King. ” Perfectly true, but the devil’s truth that has gone forth to-day as an angel of light. Instead of God’s ways being put first, every other thing is put first.
2. Inward Dissipation and Outward Degeneration ( Jeremiah 13:12–17)
Thus saith the Lord , Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land . . . with drunkenness. (cf. Psalm 60:3)
There is a difference in the way God deals with a disobedient child of His and the way He deals with a man who is going on his course without realising what he is doing. The prophets always make God take the responsibility for the destructions that come across His disobedient children.
“Give glory to the Lord your God. ” There are always one or two in the midst of a corrupt people who will listen to God’s voice. Repentance is never given to crowds of people, but to individuals in the crowd. “If any man will hear My voice . . . ” These prophets while they proclaim the judgements of God always present the pleading of God with individuals. Never succumb to believing in an inevitable fate, but fly to God, then you will never know the darkness or the judgements on sin (cf. John 3:19). Judgement comes because of conscious rejection or conscious neglect. If we see and do not obey, there will be the wandering in the shadows, by God’s decree. There is always a way back to God, and that is to fly as you are, not as you want to be. “But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret for your pride” ( Jeremiah 13:17 rv). Jeremiah expresses the deep vicarious grief that is always welling up in him and makes him such a type of Our Lord (see Luke 13:34). To realise that it is possible for everyone to be in the light and experiencing the love of God, keeps us close to God’s heart in intercession for those who will not heed.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 7 May 1938 no. 2
notes on Jeremiah
The silent sacred land
Jeremiah 13:18–27
Wherefore come these things upon me? (Jeremiah 13:22) To some people every day brings fresh causes to dis- believe God and to others new opportunities of praising and knowing God. This is not because the one is in physical health and the other not, but because one has a moral twist and the other has not. Disbelief in God is never only intellectual, it is moral.
1. Ashes of Roses
Sit ye down low [mg]: for your headtires are come down, even your beautiful crown [mg]. . . . Judah is carried away captive all of it. (13:18–19 rv )
We have to be “kings and priests unto God, ” but when once our bodies or our circumstances slip away from the rule of God in and through us there is “the fading flower of his glorious beauty” (Isaiah 28:1 rv). When we cease to do the will of God and begin to suffer it like stoics, instantly our “country” goes from us—”even the crown of your glory” (rv).
One might almost fill a large flower bed with plants arranged according to their cold-resisting powers, so that on each morning of late autumn and early winter we could see how much frost there had been the night before by the plants that had suffered.
E. K. Robinson
There is no virtue, no holiness, no life apart from the one Life, that can stand the frosted air of the world, the flesh and the devil and be more than conqueror. Jeremiah is revealing that if the life of the Son of God is not in us everything will fade and pass into ashes; when His life is in us there is no fading of any flower or beauty (cf. Isaiah 42:3).
2. Accomplishment of Ruin
The cities of the South are shut up, and there is none to open them. (13:19 rv )
Apart from the manifestation of the life of the Son of God in us all strongholds of natural virtues will sink into ruin. The Spirit of God puts corruption on natural virtues and excellencies because they belong to the man and the life of old. The Spirit of God never patches up our natural virtues, He never takes them and makes them more noble. He reconstructs us by re-creation until we are in the image of Jesus Christ.
3. Aspects of Realisation
Where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock? (13:20)
Learn to watch what God has put the sentence of death on, first in His Word, and then in personal experience. The life of the Son of God in us is the only thing that has no sentence of death on it. If we remain true to His life in us these disasters will be impossible because His Life is incorruptible.
4. Anguish of Rigour
. . . shall not sorrows take hold of thee, as of a woman in travail? (13:21 rv)
In stating the bondage of a turncoat from God’s ways the Bible applies terms of the greatest ruggedness (cf. 2 Peter 2:22). God reveals the truth that the mean- est 6 elements in personal life exercise tyranny over men who used to be a great power for God.
5. Ashamed in Retreat
. . . thy heels suffer violence. ( Jeremiah 13:22 rv )
Some sorrows leave a stateliness, but this will be a cowering shame and misery; the people will be driven into captivity like the most degraded of slaves, with- out even sandals on. Such suffering does not teach obedience, it is the result of deliberate transgression. Shame pulls the house of life into despicable ruin (cf. Luke 15:14–16). There is no refuge for the house of life saving in the Lord Jesus Christ; no refuge in natural goodness, in prayer; not only no refuge but no salvation. The only way in which the house of life is made secure, and more than secure, an amazing beauty, is through the salvation of Jesus Christ. When the Spirit of God comes into us and prepares the way for the forming of the life of the Son of God in us, there is every now and again a great aftermath of inexpressible shame as He throws light on the past. It is more than humility, it is humiliation. Humility is a virtue, the outcome of God’s indwelling; humiliation is where the Spirit of God strikes down into the things that have been defying God, till there is nothing left to support them.
6. Anathema to Rebels
Can the Ethiopian change his skin . . . ?
The condition of the people is hopeless, habit has become second nature; the day for reformation has gone by. Never trust innocence of outlook in your- self or in other people when the statements of God’s word are directly opposite (see Mark 7:21 and Jeremiah 17:19). We continually trust in ourselves and other people until we have learned to have absolute confidence in God. It is difficult when convicted to turn to Jesus Christ; we turn to vowing; but unless we turn to Jesus in obedience and let His life enter in, it is hopeless, for we build again on the same old foundation. “I never could be guilty of that. ” Yes, you could. The only place of safety is under the shadow of the Almighty. See you don’t play hide and seek, but keep up the absolute life of “hide. ” “Your life is hid with Christ in God”; then there will be immunity from all the things spoken of here but if once through curiosity we begin to go out in speculation or in vagaries of our own, we shall find that God is no respecter of persons.
7. Actual Rejection
Therefore will I scatter them, as the stubble that passeth away. . . . This is thy lot, the portion measured unto thee from Me, saith the Lord. (13:24–25 rv )
“We are the people of God, it does not matter what our moral character is like. ” The prophets talked in this way and the people trusted them (cf. 7:4–8). “Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! Thou wilt not be made clean; how long shall it yet be? ” (13:27 rv )—a sore, long-lasting purifying judgement time.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol . 7 June 1938 no . 3
notes on Jeremiah
Drought
Jeremiah 14
They come to the pits, and find no water. . . . For that no rain hath been in the land, the plowmen are ashamed. ( Jeremiah 14:3–4 rv)
While one desire remains unsatisfied, God is not Lord over all. That means we must quit some desires or else quit God. Most of us bring our desires to God and He has to wither them. When we delight in God He gives us our desires because they are in accordance with His will (see Psalm 37:4). A child goes to its mother about its skin and its toys, and we dare not think there are some things about us not for God to behold. A child of God is like a child of nature. Things that trouble a child are taken to its mother, and things that bother the child of God ought to be taken to God at once. Innocence of knowledge is the charm of a mature life and is like the ignorance of a child. Beware of being a spiritual prig, full of knowledge, instead of having the great innocence of knowledge which is the life of faith.
1. The Destruction That Wasteth at Noon- day ( Jeremiah 14:1–9)
Two things the Bible states are sure for men if they obey God—bread and water (see Isaiah 33:16);
that is all God has promised us. Look over the history of civilisations and you will find every disaster has come by taking more. A spiritual application may be made along this line—”a famine . . . of hearing the words of the lord” strikes every soul that has departed from the living God and dwelt by pleasant spiritual experiences—God’s word dead to you, no inspiration about it; prayer dead, spiritual communion dead, you wait and long and pray and nothing happens, everything languishing and dying.
You will find if sin has not been the cause, there has been a selfish glutting of your soul on experiences instead of going on to know God Who gave you the experiences. We refuse to eat the old corn of the land, we prefer manna—that God should always do some exceptional thing for us. Spiritual famine and dearth, if it does not start from sin, starts from being a spiritual glutton, dwelling entirely on the experience that God has given us instead of seeing that the experience is but the gate- way to the life. Life is the thing we live, experience is the gateway to new phases of life, and if we remain at the gate always we shall die of starvation. “We have sinned against Thee” ( Jeremiah 14:7). There is a difference between a moralist’s and a Christian’s condemnation of sin. A spiritual Christian always feels the unmitigated horror of the sin of another.
A moralist never does, to him it is an occasion to “lambaste” something that is wrong. A Christian knows that the possibilities of every sin ever committed are in him but for the grace of God. The condemnation of sin before we are saved is bitter, intense and proud. After we are saved, the sins of others come upon us with the twofold weight of the possibility of doing the like ourselves, and the possibility of vicarious intercession. “Why shouldest Thou be . . . as a mighty man that cannot save? ” (14:9). Why does not God speak? This is not atheism, but the agony of a human heart get- ting into the secret of the Cross. The Cross of Jesus Christ is not the cross of a martyr, but the revelation of the essential nature of the Trinity. The most ear- nest of us deal with the Cross as a thing that is past, it is never past, it is the eternal revelation of Almighty God. Instantly we come face to face with all the possibility of moral development that must come by suffering (cf. Hebrews 5:8).
2. Deceived into the Snare of the Fowler ( Jeremiah 14:10–22)
And the Lord said unto me, Pray not for this people for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their cry. . . . (14:11–12 rv)
Jeremiah pleads that the people have been misled by false prophets, but God says—”I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake I unto them”; they prophesied out of the deceit of their hearts. That does not mean self-deceit, it means deceit which the heart has devised that flattered sinful passions.
“And thou shalt say this word unto them, Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease” (14:17 rv). God tells Jeremiah to show his own grief to the people. “Hast Thou utterly rejected Judah? hath Thy soullothed Zion? . . . Do not abhor us, . . . remember, break not Thy covenant with us” (14:19, 21). In such words the prophet is born again in an agony of grief into a childlike simplicity, pouring out his soul before God. When the mind is born again of grief it loses all reason and becomes like a child, it has nothing to plead, only absolute despair.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 7 July 1938 no. 4
notes on Jeremiah
Scarcely saved
Jeremiah 16
They shall not be lamented. ( Jeremiah 16:4)
“And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? ” (1 Peter 4:18). Heaven must have held its breath several times over the best of us.
1. The Prophet’s Vicarious Aloofness ( Jeremiah 16:1–9)
Thou shalt not take thee a wife. . . . (16:2)
Vicarious aloofness is all very well in mind, but it is quite another matter to exhibit it in actual life. We must be careful to remember that Jeremiah was a man first and then a prophet, he was not an ascetic. This command to Jeremiah means that every relationship of a man’s life, even to the most intimate and God- ordained, must be sacrificed at times to God’s will. If we take celibacy as a command of God we make God contradict Himself. Whenever celibacy or poverty are enjoined in the Bible they are enjoined because God wants to express in that crisis a particular message in a particular age. This command is not a principle laid down but a command from God to a prophet.
“All things are lawful, . . . but all things are not expedient, ” says Paul, i. e. all things are lawful to me as a natural man, but not expedient to me as a spiri- tual man because I am under a superior command, viz. : a relationship to God. “I don’t intend to waive my rights, this particular reading and culture is good for me; this particular recreation is a great expansion to my mind, therefore I will do it”—absolutely pagan reasoning from beginning to end. How many of us have begun to realise our privilege of not doing things? The liberty to waive our rights is the great privilege of Christian sanctity. One of the meanest things is to say, “I don’t do certain things because it will damage me. ” Paul’s argument is—”I don’t do certain things because it will damage someone else” (see 1 Corinthians 8:9–13). “For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. ” Paul there expresses this vicarious attitude, which is characteristic alone of the Spirit of Christ (cf. Exodus 32:32).
2. The Prophetic Visualised Amelioration ( Jeremiah 16:10–15)
Verse 10 presents the attitude that God is taking unreasonable liberties—”Wherefore hath the lord pronounced all this great evil against us? ” Impregnable self-righteousness will scandalise God ruthlessly. Self- pity is the morbid side of self-righteousness—”Why should this thing fall on me? God is taking liberties with me, I am in the right. ” “Therefore will I cast you forth out of this land into the land that ye have not known, . . . and there shall ye serve other gods day and night” (rv ), i. e. , “you may serve the gods you have longed so much after as long as you will. ” God restrains and restrains, warns and warns, overlooks and overlooks; then He begins to bring out embarrassments against us. In the days before you knew God you did any number of things which God overlooked, but try and do them now, and if you persist you will realise what is written in Psalm 106:15—”And He gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul. ” “He gave them their request”—all restraint gone. The man who has known what God is like, and what His life is like, but still persists in going against it, will come to a time when God will fling him out to do as he chooses.
3. The Prophetic Visitation Approaching ( Jeremiah 16:16–21)
For Mine eyes are upon all their ways. . . . (16:17) The tendency to-day is to put the consequences of sin as the consequences of sin: the consequences of sin have a righteous God behind them. We take the Bible idea out of punishments and say it is the inevitable result. The Bible says that the inevitable result is brought by a personal God, and is not an ordinary moral result. Beware of making punishment the mere result of sin, it arises from the presence of a personal God.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 7 September 1938 no . 6
notes on Jeremiah
The Fountain of life
Jeremiah 17
The Lord , the fountain of living waters. ( Jeremiah 17:13) The truth of the moment is brought by Jesus into relation with Himself, the Truth. He will not allow us to rest in any detail of truth unless it is rooted in Him, it will turn to a curse instead of blessing. God continually brings us to a willingness for death on every line—death to our wishes, our desires, death to everything that in any degree is going to detach us from the Fountain of Life: we are willing to die to everything, consequently we never die. As long as we side with the thing that is going to be destroyed, we shall be destroyed with it. Every individual has the power to turn the course of life into destruction or into perfection, according to what way he chooses when God reveals the best way.
1. The Eternal Punishment of Sin ( Jeremiah 17:1–4)
All sin is unpardonable, every sinner is pardon- able. God’s punishment of sin is eternal, i. e. ageless. “For ye have kindled a fire in My anger which shall burn for ever” (rv ).
God cannot alter, and as long as there is sin it must be punished. If punishment for sin ceases, God ceases to be God. God loves where He cannot yet forgive, where forgiveness in its full sense is as yet impossible, there is no contact of heart because that which lies between has not even begun to yield to the “besom” of holy destruction.
(a) The Seat of Sin (17:1–2)
The sin of Judah . . . is graven upon the table of their heart.
“The table of their heart” is the inward seat of sin. If sin is graven with a pen of iron upon the human heart, it was also graven with an iron nail in our Lord’s hands and feet. Consciousness of sin is the exhaustion of sin, and is as big an alarm to the devil as it is a joy to the Holy Ghost. It is when we are not conscious of sin that condemnation is certain; when it spurts out in wrongs and immoralities, there is a chance for God. “The publicans and the harlots . . . “—the people who explode into all kinds of wrongs and crimes—”go into the kingdom of God before you, ” said Jesus. The deep condensed pressure of iniquity only shows itself with tremendous force like that when we go on in certain lines of conduct. When Jesus Christ comes on the scene the pressure in the heart bursts out at once (cf. John 15:22).
(b) The Severity of Sanctity (17:3–4)
“I will give thy substance and all thy treasures for a spoil . . . ” (rv ).
We distinguish between sin and the sinner, but the Bible never does. God can never pardon sin, it is impossible: He can forgive the sinner when once the sinner accepts His verdict against sin. If he does not, the punishment of sin is eternal. Eternal life or eternal death is the quality of the particular type of life a man lives. There is no alteration—God can- not pardon sin, but He instantly receives the sinner when the sinner leaves his sin and comes to Him. The Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ does not mean that God forgives the sinner and leaves him in his sin; God forgives a man for being a sinner and puts him in the place where he need never be a sinner any more. Distinction must be made between punishment and suffering. Punishment is not suffering that makes people better; people who are punished are nearly always hardened, as in this case. God often brings a man down to elemental life by punishment for sin in order to save his soul, and through intense physical suffering, either for his own wrongdoing or the wrongdoing of others, he is brought back to elemental life because God is only after one thing, a right relationship to Himself, and He does not care about our physical comforts. Until we are rightly related to Him, God will play ruthless havoc with every comfort and relationship we have.
The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 7 October 1938 no . 7
notes on Jeremiah
The Fountain of life
(Continued)
Jeremiah 17
2. The Eternal Programme of Sanctity ( Jeremiah 17:5–13)
(a) The Barren Heath
The Bible unvarnishedly speaks of fundamental trust in another as wickedness. “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm . . . ” Wherever we trust in goodness or nobility instead of in God, we suddenly find ourselves in a howling waste wilderness. The attitude of a godly life is to put no confidence in anything or anyone but God. Not only do we find disillusionment, but we find that God does not allow us teachers or comrades or friends too long. Immediately our teachers or friends begin to wean our trust from Him, there is blight- ing and upset, followed by separation; until the great secret is learned that when once a man or woman’s heart is strong in confidence in God, there is no snare in earthly friendship because the heart is at rest with God, and there are no areas of desert and wilderness such as are frequently seen in lives.
Jesus Christ brings us into a sanctity where God alone lives. The lives that grow stronger are lives in the desert, deep-rooted in God, and they always remind us of God when we come in contact with them; they never sentimentalise our hearts around them. We can never rest in a man or woman of God, there is always something thorny about them that warns us off, until the man or woman becomes a mere indicator to Jesus Christ. In the Bible we never find the close intimacies of friendship that we find everywhere else. Great men and great women are taken up and dropped, and the one Figure left is Jesus Christ. We do not forget the friends who have helped us, but they have merged us into a better knowledge of Jesus Christ. Every friendship that does not lead to a deeper, better knowledge of God and at the same time make us fundamentally independent of that friendship, is a curse.
(b) The Blighting Hideousness
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (17:9)
The Spirit of God corrupts our natural virtues. If we are naturally pure-minded, naturally good-tempered, naturally loving, we shall find that since we became spiritual God’s corruption has been put on everything that was of old, because the natural virtues are not promises of what we are going to be, but remnants of what we were created to be, and the new life re-forms its own virtues. It is the most woeful thing to see people in the service of God depending on what the grace of God never gave them, depending on what they have by the accidents of heredity. Intellectually we nearly always sympathise with pagan virtues, while spiritually God is trying to get us into contact with the real life of the Lord Jesus Christ that cannot be described in terms of natural virtues. And every virtue we possess, . . . . Is His alone. In the life of Jesus, the perfectly sinless One, the natural was offered by Him as a sacrifice to God. When we are sanctified the perpetual temptation is to do what Jesus did not do—”Now I am sanctified I can do what I like. ” I cannot. My natural life and natural gifts are to be turned into a spiritual possession by offering them to God. “They have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters. ” We face the problems of life with a pagan intellect and say, “How confusing. ” The Bible is simple—Holiness unto the lord and no care for any other thing. The whole of life is meant to exhibit that God is making saints, not civilisations or clever able men and women, but saints.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 7 November 1938 no. 8
notes on Jeremiah
Dizziness
Jeremiah 17:14–18
The human body has a “spirit level” in the head, when that spirit level is disturbed, vertigo or dizziness is the result. There is a “spirit level” spiritually, viz. , union with God, and unless that is kept right dizziness and confusion of thought will always happen.
1. Dejection and Derision ( Jeremiah 17:14–15)
“Reproach hath broken my heart” (cf. Matthew 27:39–44). They reproached Jesus with the truth and He had not a word to say. He died in ignominy and shame, remember. It was not that sinners jeered at Him, but that the people He came to save flung in His teeth the things that He had said. The same thing with Jeremiah—”Behold, they say unto me, Where is the word of the lord? let it come now, ” and Jeremiah turned to God in despair. “Oh Lord, bring me not to confusion by leaving these prophecies unfulfilled. ” If you stand for God’s truth you are sure to experience reproach, and if once you open your mouth to vindicate yourself, you lose everything you were on the point of gaining. Let the ignominy and shame come. “For we also are weak in Him. ” It is the one thing we won’t be—”weak in Him. ” When Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me, ” they were weak things he spoke about, how to be abased, to be hungry, to suffer need. That is the test of a Christian, the power to descend until you are looked upon as absolute refuse and you have not a word to say any more than your Lord had. Only in that condition see that your faith in God does not fail.
2. Devotion and Depression ( Jeremiah 17:16–17)
These verses explain why Our Lord said that God’s message would only be accepted through strangers (see Luke 4:16–27).
A stranger knows nothing what- ever about our condition, the consequence is his mes- sage goes straight home and conscience says, “That must be the voice of God. ” A person who knows us dare not say what he knows because immediately he does it is difficult to appear free from personal vindictiveness. People charged Jeremiah with exhibiting personal spleen—”You have been saying these things and nothing has happened; you simply prophesy because you are vindictive against us. ” It is easier to be true to conviction than to be true to God. As workers for God we must be identified with God, not with His message.
Another danger of a prophet is the snare the prophet Jonah fell into, and Jeremiah also nearly fell into it. Jonah denounced the people of Nineveh and when God did not carry it out, Jonah was angry with God.
3. Directed Destruction ( Jeremiah 17:18)
Bring upon them the day of evil. . . .
This is not the utterance of a spiteful, vindictive temperament; it is the statement of a prophet of God Who knows God’s truth, and knows also that the saving of himself as a prophet means the destruction of the people whom he loves better than himself. “Destroy them with double destruction, ” till everything contrary to God has been broken and demolished. This is where Jeremiah is nearest Jesus Christ and farthest from us. “I only want to see the people who are against me humiliated”—that is the spirit of the devil. The spirit of a prophet is—”God must be vindicated, and as a servant of God I will stand alongside the vindication, although it means standing with God against the ones who are dearer to me than life. “
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 7 December 1938 no . 9
notes on Jeremiah
The Potter and the clay
Jeremiah 17:19–18:10
I do with you as this potter. ( Jeremiah 18:6)
1. The Re-Statement of the Blessed Health ( Jeremiah 17:19–27)
These verses show that the way of safety appointed to the people lies in keeping one of the fundamental precepts of the Decalogue, viz. , the observance of the Sabbath. “Thus saith the lord ; take heed for your life’s sake [rv mg], and bear no burden on the sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem” (17:21– 22). Verses 24–26 describe the blessings which will be brought to the people if they hallow the Sabbath day, and verse 27 describes the curse if it is profaned. Being not under the law but under grace means that we fulfill all the old law easily and a good deal more. With regard to the Sabbath, Jesus said “the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath. ” That means we have to remember that Jesus Christ is the Lord of the one day that is His, though we can rob Him of it. When we recognise that the Sabbath day belongs to God, every other day that we give over to Him is our gift. The same with regard to money and possessions. The giving of the tenth is not a sign that it all belongs to God, but a sign that the tenth belongs to God and the rest is ours, and we are held responsible for what we do with it. Our Lord says, “Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matthew 5:17 rv). If we will heed the spirit of God He will always check when we are in danger of turning liberty into license.
2. The Resource of Boundless Holiness ( Jeremiah 18:1–10)
Every prophecy in Jeremiah begins with a reference to the word of the Lord coming to him. “The word which came to Jeremiah from the lord , saying, Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear My words” (18:1–2).
The word of Jehovah which came to Jeremiah by suggestion in the potter’s house was that God is sovereign in history, He will mould and re-mould until He gets the “vessel” to His mind. And yet God’s sovereignty has limitations which He Himself has sovereignly placed in man—the mysterious gift of freedom. With man rests the final issue, not with God. “O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord . Behold, as the clay in the potter’s hand, so are ye in Mine hand, O house of Israel” (18:6). The illustration God uses is that of a potter dealing with stubborn clay and remodelling it according to his own purpose. The snare of belief in God’s sovereignty is to make that sovereignty a logically consistent thing, whereas the sovereignty of God is the free will of God in which two conditions are plainly placed by God Himself, first the holiness of God and second the freedom of man. The truth of God in application is always moral. Jeremiah is bringing the truth in application to these people that they are not going to obtain anything from God unless they maintain a right relationship to Him, and that even if they should be destroyed on the wheel, God’s purpose for His covenant people would still come to pass. God never gives us an answer, He simply puts us on lines where it is possible for the truth to break more and more as we go on.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 7 January 1939 no . 10
notes on Jeremiah
Excelsior
Jeremiah 18:11–23
Will a man leave the snow of Lebanon . . . ? (Jeremiah 18:14)
“Excelsior” means higher still. The conception of these studies is that man must look higher for the source of life and salvation than the experience of life, apart from an experimental knowledge of God, would lead him to look. Once fail from looking at the highest and degeneration begins. It is the early desires that are the highest and best.
1. False Direction ( Jeremiah 18:11–13)
These people are affecting to be the people of God— “We are the people of God, this is the temple of God; and these prophets’ talk is all beside the mark, the prophets we like to listen to are those who prophesy smooth things. ” Affectation is the attitude of life when there is no life, and the higher the life affected, the deeper the iniquity. Jeremiah is probing straight down to the rottenness at the heart. The early aspirations God stirred in them have gone, and now they simply make God and everything in connection with Him an affectation to go on their own ways. “But they say, . . . we will walk after our own devices, and we will do every one after the stubbornness of his evil heart” (18:12 rv ).
2. Forsaken Direction ( Jeremiah 18:14–17)
“Will a man leave the snow of Lebanon . . . ?
” Will a man forsake the very way of his own life when he knows what it is? It is just that obstinacy that makes the problem of individual and national life. “Knowledge is virtue, if only men knew, they would not go wrong, ” is not true. It is not sufficient to be persuaded a thing is wrong; there is an obstinacy that deliberately takes the law into its own hand and leaves the source of its life. There needs to be a recognition of where the source of life is and a determination to stay at it. Backsliding is the prevailing of human stubbornness after the experimental knowledge of salvation. Backsliding is never spoken of in the Bible as a degenerate tendency, but as a conscious forsaking. “They have caused them to stumble in their ways, in the ancient paths” (rv)—the ways the patriarchs walked in, of time immemorial, a dateless way, the way of always being in right relation- ship to God; but they have caused them to stumble out of that way by making sacrifices to vanity. It is no longer “Satisfy us early with Thy mercy” but, “Satisfy us with these other things, we want material prosper- ity and success. ” They have forgotten the Source of their life while still maintaining the gesticulations of a life that had been nourished from the mountain-tops of God, but is no longer nourished there. They have found “a way not cast up, ” a way on which one can- not advance. Once stop looking at the mountain and all prosperity, which is but an effect, vanishes. Never falter by trying to make anything lesser the cause for what is greater; for instance, trying to make health of body the cause for a right spiritual relationship, or material prosperity the cause for worshiping God, and never make obedience the reason that God is blessing you, obedience is the effect of being rightly related to God. Remember our life is maintained from the heights only.
3. Forced Direction ( Jeremiah 18:18–23)
Then said they, Come and let us devise devices against Jeremiah. . . .
And let us not give heed to any of his words. (18:18)
Beware of seeking out inconsistencies in God’s children in order to evade obeying God’s message yourself. If there comes to you a message on personal holiness, beware of the tendency that puts you on the watch to see if that person is consistent; the reason you watch is that you want to evade obeying God’s message. There is an antipathy to the message of holiness which prides itself on being amazingly shrewd, and whenever a man of God is known to fall, there is a sigh of relief—”Well, that saves me, I have always been suspicious about this holy life, ” and under the affectation of profound sadness there is a glow of relief on the inside. The trick is as old as the garden of Eden. Verses 19–23. Jeremiah asks God to bring down His vengeance upon the people, he sees that the peo- ple he loves can only be touched by the vengeance of God; and yet Jesus said, “The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. ” But we must never forget what is Our Lord’s definition of life, “a man’s life consisteth not, ” He says, “in the abundance of the things which he possesseth, ” and devastation and destruction of these things may mean the salvation of the life as Jesus sees it. One of the hardest lessons to learn is that of “hands off ” in certain kinds of suffering, because you may be putting yourself in the way of God saving a life. The only way in which the salvation of that life can come may be the very way you have told God you will never allow it to come. The secret is to maintain life from the highest plane—”hid with Christ in God. “
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol . 7 February 1939 no . 11
notes on Jeremiah
Broken Pottery
Jeremiah 19
A potter’s vessel, that cannot be made whole again. ( Jeremiah 19:11)
There are two sins of spiritual condition that can- not be forgiven; the first is sin against man—spiritual murder, unforgiving dislike; the second is sin against God—shutting God out from worship and everything. Neither of these sins are acts, they are conditions. When a man holds either, God is out- side him in every sense, holding to him only by the Creator relationship, and He keeps that hold against the will of the man. The ordinary occurrences of life reveal to us the condition of our hearts and minds—a dislike that will not forgive, that has not the slight- est intention of making any excuse. That is a natural condition that cannot be forgiven until a man wishes to turn from it. The great characteristic of the super- natural grace of God is put by Jesus on the line of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not an act, it is the supernatural manifestation of a miracle within us. In Jeremiah 18 a picture of muddled clay remodelled; in this chapter we have a picture of a made and used vessel smashed into the scrap-heap. “We have Abraham to our father” (Luke 3:8). “My father and mother were spiritual, therefore I am a child of God. ” We are only children of God by personal regeneration through the Atonement. Children of God are not made by physical creation, but by moral creation. God created His ancient people for one purpose only, to be His servants until the whole world should know Who He is, that purpose will be fulfilled whether His people are on the scrap-heap or not.
1. Jeremiah and the Judicious Minds ( Jeremiah 19:1–2; John 2:13–17)
The attitude of Our Lord to the judicious minds of His day was similar. In the temple precincts judicious minds were without excuse, because they understood what Our Lord was doing. Outside Jerusalem, Our Lord always said, “Don’t tell anyone Who I am”; every time He went to Jerusalem He made it clear Who He was. The presentation of the Gospel of God to sinners is one of love and mercy, but to the house of God one of judgement and truth. When we preach to the crowd outside we lambaste drunkenness and other things, Jesus never did. The stern messages of the Bible are never given to sinners, but to God’s people. If we follow the order God gives, we will find John 16:1 is true.
2. Jeremiah and the Judgement Message ( Jeremiah 19:3;
1 Corinthians 3:17) “They have . . . estranged this place. . . . ” They have disowned it as the house of God and made it their own place. “If any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are” (rv). Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost, we must take care not to estrange “this place. ” In the second cleansing of the Temple Our Lord “would not suffer that any man should carry a vessel through the temple, ” making it a convenience (see Mark 11:15–17). How many of us use our bodily strength as a convenience for ourselves? The appeal nowadays is to rest on Sundays not because it is God’s day, but because we shall do our work better in the week. God touches His children’s bodies with pain in an extraordinary way (see 1 Peter 4:1); the devil takes care we do not suffer in the flesh as long as we use our bodies for ourselves. We can always escape the purpose of God for our bodily lives. Don’t disown your body as a temple of God, but know that whatever happens to your body is under the sovereignty of God. “. . . which temple ye are. ” The abode of God is not the abode of God’s blessings, but the abode of the blessing God. “We have this treasure in earthen ves- sels, ” and the vessel must be broken before the light appears. When God is making our bodies transparent for Himself to shine through we ask Him to patch us up. “No, ” says God, “I am making a window. ” He made His Son a bruised and broken vessel (see Isaiah 53). When we are bruised we say “That is the devil. ” Don’t despise the chastenings of the Lord. We are God’s and God is in us for His glory. We must always take our orders from God’s sovereignty, not from our ideas of how God should work.
3. Despising the Justice of God ( Jeremiah 19:4; 1 Corinthians 4:5)
And have filled this place with the blood of innocents. In cleansing the temple courts Jesus did not drive out the doves, He asked the owners to take them out. “Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come. ” In mind and spirit and heart there are pure affections and ideas born of the Holy Ghost that are being turned into merchandise by us, we use them not for God’s glory but for our own ends, and ask God to bless them. The devil will make you judge your sentiments before the Lord appears; don’t. The devil will counterfeit a hyperconscientiousness for the detecting voice of the Spirit of God. This motive was wrong, that was wrong, he tries to make us rake up things before God. There are times when we are brought under the scrutiny of God and are marvellously conscious of the Lord’s presence, that is the moment to judge, that is the crisis of self-revelation. When those moments come, don’t despise them.
4. Desecrating the Worship of God ( Jeremiah 19:5; Galatians 5:4)
They have offered burnt-offerings “which I commanded not. ” The Apostle Paul is dealing with the same sentiment. When once we begin to choose what we are going to dedicate to God, or to what religious creed or conviction we are going to devote our lives, we are desecrating what God has consecrated. God has told us to worship Him by presenting our bodies to Him. “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship [rv mg]” (Romans 12:1).
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 7 March 1939 no . 12
notes on Jeremiah
The Foolishness of God
Jeremiah 20
O Lord, . . . every one mocketh me. ( Jeremiah 20:7)
Jeremiah came back to the city and repeated to all the people the message he gave to the elders ( Jeremiah 19:14–15). For the first time Jeremiah is designated by his office—”the prophet” (20:2), and the action of Pashur is against him as a prophet for his public utterance. According to the people Pashur was right and Jeremiah a raving fanatic. How we select things out of the Bible! We have forgotten what Paul wrote—”For He was crucified through weakness. . . . For we also are weak in Him” (rv ). A Christian is one who can be weak, an abject failure in the eyes of the world. Jeremiah is getting into the throes of this central revelation of God Almighty—the Cross.
1. The Degradation of Divinity ( Jeremiah 20:1–6)
There comes a time with nations or individuals when they may degrade Divinity and never be bothered again (cf. Mark 6:27; Luke 23:8–9). The despite done to Jeremiah is done to God Almighty (cf. Acts 9:4—”Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? “). Our Lord identifies His great name with the feeblest of His disciples.
2. The Discipline of Grace ( Jeremiah 20:7–18)
It takes the grace of God to go through disgrace unspoilt. If Jeremiah’s distress makes you condemn him, pass it by; but if, according to the reason of this world, you understand that God’s ways are foolishness, you will put Jeremiah’s grief and staggered amazement within sight of Gethsemane and Calvary and no one else near. Every problem is faced and fathomed in the prophecies of Jeremiah, that is why he stands nearer to the centre of God’s heart than any of the prophets.
(a) Deceived (20:7–8)
“O Lord, Thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived. ” Jeremiah says in heart-breaking sobs before God “I have been deceived in what I hoped Thou wouldest do. ” His cry is not the theological argument of a man’s mind, he is pouring it all out before God; there is no charge brought against God and no reply from God. I spoke because the people were reproaching Thy word, and now I see nothing but “derision all the day” (rv).
(b) Distressed (20:9)
Jeremiah is sensitive to the last degree to all the affinities of the people and he speaks out of perplexity— if I determine to keep silent, “then there is in mine heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with forbearing” (rv).
(c) Defamed (20:10)
“I have heard the defaming of many. . . . Denounce, and we will denounce him, say all my familiar friends, they that watch for my halting” (rv ). “The people watch for inconsistencies in my life that they may say on that ground I am not preaching Thy truth. ” To be defamed means that if you stand for God you will not be able to stand for anything else—”no use since they turned religious. “
(d) Devoted (20:11–13)
“But the Lord is with me”—a sudden outburst of the devotion of Jeremiah’s heart for God. “For unto Thee have I revealed my cause” (rv ). When in communion with God his desires are a delight, he sees and enjoys deliverance. “Sing unto the lord , praise ye the lord : for He hath delivered the soul of the needy” (rv ).
(e) De Profundis (20:14–17)
It takes the Man of Sorrows to understand where Jeremiah has got to.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 8 April 1939 no . 1
notes on Jeremiah
The Fear of God
Jeremiah 22
O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord .
A thing that is unknown and yet known to be, is always formidable. “Perfect love casteth out fear”— but not love in its beginning. To say “Therefore will we not fear, though . . . ” (rv) is only possible when the love of God is having its way.
1. Oracle to Royal Jurisdiction ( Jeremiah 22:1–5; Matthew 21:5)
“Go down to the house of the king. . . . “
These verses indicate that every power of human government that can be used by the devil and self-interest can be reclaimed and used by God. On the other hand, everything that is usable by God is abusable by the devil. The sin of the people of God was not that they desired a king, but that they desired a king that they might be “like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:19–20). “Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and riding upon an ass” (rv ). These words express in emblem as well as in act the whole of Old Testament prophecy along this line—a meek king, a lowly king, “riding upon an ass, ” which in Scripture stands for mankind. Our Lord is the only One Who can ride on human- ity, “loose” (Mark 11:2). The true King is Jesus Christ Who shall reign not only in spiritual reality but in external visible reality.
2. Oracle of Royal Judgement ( Jeremiah 22:6–19;
Matthew 23:38; 25:41) “And I will prepare destroyers against thee. . . . ” As in the Book of Isaiah, so in Jeremiah, God is revealed as the Controller behind every power of evil; when evil strikes His people it strikes not only by God’s permission but under His direct control (cf. Isaiah 37:29; John 19:11). The kings of that time by their godless courses hurried on the threatened destruction. “Weep ye not for the dead, . . . but weep sore for him that goeth away” ( Jeremiah 22:10). Jeremiah counsels them not only to bemoan the king being carried away prisoner, but for the forsaken condition of the people. “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. ” Twice before Jesus had said, “My Father’s house, ” the solemn application being that God hands individuals as well as nations over to a desecrated temple which He calls “your house. ” We need to bear in mind that chaos and wrath are the foundation of the life of every man who does not live in communion with God.
“. . . everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. ” God’s holiness never alters its attitude to dev- ilishness; as long as God endures, He endures as “ever- lasting fire” to the devil. God is “a consuming fire” and if we side with the devil we shall know His burning. Divine fire as opposed to natural fire, burns the fiercer.
The farther you get away from it; when you get nearer to God, His burning becomes a comfort. Condemnation corresponds to light rejected ( John 3:19). God always allows the lash to fall more heavily on His own people if once they pervert their knowledge of Him. Never ignore the fact that God is a holy God. “Shalt thou reign, because thou strivest to excel in cedar? ” ( Jeremiah 22:15 rv). Kingship does not consist in the erection of royal palaces, but in the administration of right and justice. Watch the danger of architectural prominence; whenever money which has been given for missionary enterprise goes for the erection of buildings in the name of the Son of Man Who came “to seek and to save that which was lost, ” starvation comes to God’s people. Paul’s irony in 1 Corinthians 4:8 brings to light an abiding truth: we are saved to be “kings and priests, ” but to become kings and priests without the humility of salvation will produce an oppression that is a disgust to the heart of God.
3. Oracle of Retributive Justice ( Jeremiah 22:20–23; John 15:2, 6)
I spake unto thee in thy prosperity; but thou saidst, I will not hear. . . . (22:21) Two phases of retributive justice are mentioned in John 15: the quiet removal of a fruitless branch by God ( John 15:2);
the noisy public removal of a fruit- less branch by men ( John 15:6). Steadfast mainte- nance of a relationship to God by private obedience is the only way to bear fruit.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 8 May 1939 no. 2
notes on Jeremiah
Prophets wise and other Wise
Jeremiah 23
Mine heart within me is broken because of the prophets. ( Jeremiah 23:9)
1 . The Development of the Prophet
A prophet is one who knows with holy certainty that God’s perfect will must eventually overcome all resistance and self-will. In chapter 23 Jeremiah speaks against the accredited leaders of the day and against the professional preachers. All that refers to the prophets of the Old Testament dispensation has a direct application to us, no matter what we think we are. The principles are for all, even the most insignificant of us. A great deal of what we proclaim can never be worked out in experience, but whenever a standard has to be proclaimed we are exonerated or condemned according to the way we carry out those dictates of the Spirit of God. We must be the living incarnation of what we teach or else we are hum- bugs. Our Lord frequently mentions the prophets. He Himself was a prophet, He came to proclaim the truth of God (cf. Matthew 23:37).
2. The Degeneracy of the Prophet
In chapter 23 Jeremiah points out very clearly how degeneration starts and continues. When an organisation is maintained by pagan methods it becomes aggressive, intolerant and quite unlike anything that takes its standard from Jesus Christ. There may be no trace of this in the individual lives of those belonging to the organisation, they may be truly humble saints. We are apt to say we are battling for God’s glory when we are battling for our own organisation; union with Jesus Christ is the one essential.
(a) The Stealer in Messages
“Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal My words every one from his neighbour” (23:30). Stealing in this connection does not mean taking what does not belong to us, but persuading ourselves and other people that it never belonged to anyone else. Where did you get your form of testimony from? Have you stolen God’s words from your neighbour? The stealer takes the truths from his neighbour and gives them to the people without applying them to himself. The beginning of degeneracy is on that line.
(b) The Strenuous Planner
“Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that use [take, rv mg] their tongues and say, He saith” (23:31). Spiritual life produces mental energy, but strenuous mental energy may be the counterfeit of spiritual life. The test is—is the life of God manifested in the personal life of the prophet? When people get to know us, do they find that we are amazingly captious and unlike Our Lord. Jesus said, “By their fruits ye shall know them. “
(c) The Scathing of the Motive “Behold, I am against them that prophesy lying dreams, . . . and cause My people to err by their lies” (23:32 rv ). God scathes the motive at the heart of the false prophet. A lie is not necessarily an inaccuracy of speech. If a prophet says, “Of course God does not mean you to live up to that standard, ” that is a lie which causes God’s people to err. If we are not working out in our private lives the messages we are hand- ing out, we are deepening the damnation of our own souls as messengers of God.
3. The Direction of the Prophet
(a) Be Simple and Natural (23:14)
A prophet has no manner or etiquette, he is undecoratedly simple, and must find his own way into the immediate presence of God. You can get at a man in any other calling in life quicker than at a minister, because a minister is apt to be artificial.
(b) Be Sanctified and Natural (23:18)
Jeremiah’s personal relationship to God was much more in evidence than the time he gave to prayer. The important direction for right guidance as a worker is to realise the presence of God and your relationship to Him. The majority of us measure our realisation of God’s presence by the time we give to prayer—abominable self-righteousness! “They have their reward, ” said Jesus. Jeremiah lived in relationship to God all the time. The one dominant note of his life was that he was God’s man. He stood apart from the Schools of the prophets, and that is why his word came with such a challenge against the prophets.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol . 8 June 1939 no . 3
notes on Jeremiah
Rule or ruin
Jeremiah 23
The Lord is our righteousness. ( Jeremiah 23:6 rv)
A Christian worker is measured by the words he speaks in the name of God. It is perilously easy to do one of two things, viz. , to bind burdens on other people by God’s word that we do not understand and have no intention of helping them lift (see Luke 11:46), or to placidly explain away the full purport of the word of God. Our Lord did not scathe sin, He came to save from it. The aftermath of a crooked personal disposition works out in scathing sin (see Luke 9:54).
1. Perils of Power ( Jeremiah 23:1–3; cf. Luke 22:24–27)
Temporal power is merely the manifestation of a Divine purpose leaving ample room for the prostitution of that power. “But the l ord hardened Pharaoh’s heart. ” When once a man is placed in a position of honour under God’s providence and does not maintain a right relationship to God, the very position in which God has put him will harden him away from God. Power we must have, whether we like it or not, but power is a terrible peril unless the life is rooted in God’s grace. Bear in mind the distinction between the results of sin and punishment for sin. Verse 2 refers to the latter—”. . . behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the lord. ” The inevitable result of sin is to destroy the power of knowing it is sin. The punishment of sin is that God banishes the sinner from His presence. What is being forgotten to-day is that there is any punishment—”This is simply the result of having made a mistake. ” The suffering that comes to the children of bad people is the inevitable result of sin, not its punishment; punishment is meted out here or hereafter to the parents who may never suffer in this present life. In this case God interfered with the punishment because they were His people. “Ye have scattered My flock, and driven them away . . . ” (23:2). Beware of the possibility of being faced by God at some time with the lives you have been the cause of being driven out.
2. Pearl of Price ( Jeremiah 23:4–8; Matthew 13:45–46)
These verses are a warning as to the easy way we try to ignore the deep unchangeable purposes of Almighty God. God’s purposes are brought about not only by sovereign decrees but by the delightful acquiescence of His people. That is why it takes time. God does not badger us into His will. His will will be done, and the marvel of the grace of God is that the most eager longing we have is for His will.
Any rejoicing before God that is not based on humility is never born of the Spirit of God; rejoicing is made possible by the Atonement only and is wrought by the Holy Spirit. Bit by bit God lets us see what the grace of God covers and atones for. The only attitude a Christian can have is one of absolute humility before God; if we are anything at all in the holy life it is by the grace of God and no other way. The Apostle Paul never forgot what he had been. The deeper we go into the grace of God the more profound is our humility, there is no holiness without humility.
3. Pressure of Pain ( Jeremiah 23:9–15)
“Mine heart within me is broken. . . . ” This is not the despondent crushing on account of sin alluded to in Psalm 51, but a profound inward emotion that staggered the prophet until he became like a drunken man because of God’s wrath at the lives of the people. That is the way God works. He takes one or two and makes them understand the condition of things around them, and they have no comrades. When God is bringing a new manifestation of Himself into the world, He burdens someone, and the burden is not a pious affectation. When God begins to favour you with a burden, never try to find out whether any- one else has the same burden. We have our own little difficulties and suffering, but who among us can God take up into the distress of the Holy Ghost when He is bringing in a new manifestation of His purposes? The characteristic of a saint is not—”There are great dangers and perils, I wonder God does not rouse up His people. ” He won’t; He will rouse you. Don’t con- fer with others (Galatians 1:16). It is a great peril to see things, because the pressure of the pain is the beginning of being made broken bread and poured- out wine. Nothing is more abhorrent to God and man than an affected burden. The child of God is a child, and a child’s griefs and joys are tremendous, but you can always tell when grief is affected because it fixes our minds on the person instead of rousing us up to realise what God is doing through that person.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 8 July 1939 no. 4
notes on Jeremiah
Hidden Rocks
Jeremiah 23:9–12
They . . . caused My people Israel to err. ( Jeremiah 23:13)
The phrase “hidden rocks” is used in the Epistle of Jude as illustrating false brethren (see Jude 12 rv). At times these “rocks” present themselves in the guise of moods or sentiments. In this chapter Jeremiah is dealing with the false prophets whose peril to the people of God is that they are as rocks unlighted in the way of warning.
1. Masked Perils of Spiritual Service ( Jeremiah 23:9–15)
False brethren, false moods and false prophets always begin right, and only the Spirit of God is capable of unmasking them. “Their course is evil, and their force is not right” (23:10), literally, “they are valiant in wrong. ” “Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, ” is Jude’s description of the same kind of thing in another dispensation. “Yea, in My house have I found their wickedness, saith the lord ” ( Jeremiah 23:11). Both prophet and priest who should lead the people the right way, are profane; they desecrate even the house of God by their wickedness. Every power of personal influence with which God invests a prophet of His, turns into a thronging enticement to evil when that prophet departs from abiding in God. John 15:6 states in the language of Our Lord that lack of fruit means sovereign removal by God. “Wherefore their way shall be unto them as slippery ways in the darkness” ( Jeremiah 23:12). The secure places of sanctification and the slippery places are put close together in the Bible. There is no scope to equal the scope of a Christian community for the grossest immorality out of hell. A man or woman who has been right with God and who lets in immorality will end worse than a heathen, there is a genius for doing wrong. “For I will bring evil upon them, . . . saith the lord” (23:12). The evil does not happen, it is ordered. Abiding in Christ is the only safety.
2. Mighty Power of Spiritual Fellowship ( Jeremiah 23:16–22; cf. Jude 12–13)
Jeremiah is having revealed to him the corruption of the false prophets of God—”they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the lord” (23:16). If the preaching of a servant of God does not make me brace myself up and watch my feet and my ways, one of two things is the reason— either the preacher is unreal, or I hate being better. At some time or other all of us have had a detestation of being better. The rage produced by being faced with a life which in reality is better than our own, awakens either a desire to be like it, or else hatred without cause against that life. “They hated Me with- out a cause, ” said Jesus. These men are— “without fear. ” They prophesy continued peace and well-being to the despisers of God. “Ye shall have peace; . . . No evil shall come upon you. ” “without water. ” “For who hath stood in the counsel of the lord , and hath perceived and heard His word? ” Jeremiah implies that none of the prophets have stood in the counsel of the Lord; he him- self is there and he knows the Word of the Lord because of the prophetic vision that comes with it.
These prophets are not in the counsel of God, there is no “water” (cf. John 7:37–39), no life or liberty or freedom, no lift into the presence of God, because they are not believing in God, they are expounding a theory. “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. ” “The words I speak . . . “; the devil does the quoting. God makes His Word living by speaking it to you. There is a feeling of deep settled peace when the Holy Ghost brings a word, full of light and illumination, you know better than you can express, “The Lord said that to me. ” A false worker banks only on the statements of God divorced from communion with God. “God has said that, now stick to it. ” Never cling to the Word of God in an experience as something separable from God; if you do, the result will be perplexity arising out of a false confidence not rooted in God.
The one test is, Am I so abiding in Jesus that every word of His is like the one He did speak? Beware of the obstinacy of belief in a word God spoke once your connection with Him is severed. The obstinacy Jeremiah alludes to is a sensual firmness, “I don’t intend to budge. ” You never find a noble, pure character obstinate; every trace of obstinacy means sensual selfishness somewhere; it is not strength of will, but lack of will. “without fruit. ” “I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran. ” The test that prophets preach from the presence of God is that fruit appears, not in the shape of converts, but in the shape of godly living. “Ye shall know them by their fruits. ” The test is—How many people stop being mean, 7 being impure, stop committing sin? how many people learn to live rightly? The sign that God is in the word and making it living is the fruit of godliness in the lives of those who speak it and in the lives of their hearers.
The quest of spiritual power while forgetting the uses of such power is an unlighted rock that ends in destruction. Pride submerges itself and becomes piety, but it is just as devilish. Why do I want to be sanctified? Why do I want to understand God’s Word? Why do I want to be pure and upright? It is quite possible to covet and put yourself on the quest for high spiritual power and end in “the blackness of darkness. ” Spiritual power means abiding in the vine until there is nothing but the vine, absolute efface- ment of myself for Jesus Christ. The false mood will creep in from the submerged part of your life when- ever you get the idea that you have to be a written epistle. Of course you have, but you have not to know it! Beware of the idea—”Now I am in God’s show- room, I must be careful what to say and do because I am a specimen of His work. ” The branch knows nothing about the fruit; all the branch knows is that “My Father . . . purgeth it. ” “I am the Vine, ” said Jesus, not the root; “I am everything there is; you are the branches. “
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 8 September 1939 no . 6
notes on Jeremiah
Submerged Rocks
Jeremiah 23:23–40
I . . . will utterly forget you. ( Jeremiah 23:39) The greatest perils of the soul are submerged.
1. What the Spirit Speaketh Expressly ( Jeremiah 23:23–27; cf. 1 Timothy 4:1)
We can only detect the express speaking of the Spirit by the same Spirit being in us. We do not naturally rely on the Spirit of God to expound God’s word, we use our own intelligence. We think of God as being “somewhere, ” and we think of the hereafter in terms of space and time. When the Spirit of God expounds the spiritual life He does not deal with locations. “Am I a God at hand, saith the lord, and not a God afar off ? ” There is neither “near” nor “far” with God. We have to un-learn our parochial notions about God, viz. , the idea that He is interested in our local circumstances; the truth is that God enables us to be interested in Him in our local circumstances. “I have heard what the prophets have said, that prophesy lies in My name. ” To “prophesy lies in My name” is to speak a Bible truth about God because it sounds right and then live exactly as if our own common sense were God. All our morality that is not based on a right relationship to God is as “filthy rags” in His sight. Verse 27—”which think to cause my people to forget My Name . . . “—refers to the fact that the prophets relate their dreams to their fellow-men, not to their fellow-prophets. We hear too much about the “Higher Christian Life, ” 8 about entire sanctification, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost; they are experiences wrought by God, to be confessed in His Name. These realities of the soul are closely allied to reticence. Jesus did not say, “everyone who shall testify of Me, ” but, “every one who shall confess Me before men . . . ” (rv). The glib way in which we rap out our testimony, “Bless God, I am saved and sanctified, ” is shallow hypocrisy. Watch the one who makes a glowing testimony of Jesus, his speech is chastened into a confession. The confession of what God has done for me is for my own sake, not for the sake of those who listen—”I know that in this matter I have no one to depend upon but God. “
2. While “The Spots Sport Expression” ( Jeremiah 23:28–32; cf. 2 Peter 2:13)
A “dream” placed in opposition to “My word, ” God says, is as “straw” compared with “wheat. ” The Bible student must be careful to distinguish between the speculations of his own heart and the word of God. The question is not whether we agree with what God’s Word says, but, Did God say it? If we agreed with it, we should fathom God. There is a great deal that is obscure in God’s Word and it is only revealed as the saint goes on with God. Verse 29. Jeremiah says that God’s word is as fire, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces. There will be nothing left in a man but God’s work when He has done with him; He spares not (cf. 1 Corin- thians 3:13; Hebrews 4:12). The practice of these prophets is characterised in three ways: first, stealing the word of God from one another in order to give their utterances the character of Divine oracle, “. . . that steal My words every one from his neighbour” ( Jeremiah 23:30)—giving it out as God’s message to me; it is not, it is God’s word, and the only proof that it is God’s message to me is that it is being worked out in my life. Second, they “use their tongues, and say, He saith” (23:31). The reference is to the secret communications of Jehovah. The snare for us to-day is mistaking intense mental effort for inspiration. Speaking in God’s Name never fags the speaker. Give the message God gives you and you are re-created. The source of the inspiration is not mental effort, but concentration on God. Third, they feign revelations by means of dreams (23:32). Beware of brooding on the Word of God in a “hot” atmo- sphere because out of it you will generate a wrong speculation. Be simple and obedient, and the Word of God will open to you as naturally as breathing.
3. And “The Self-Willed Speaketh Evil” ( Jeremiah 23:33–40; cf. 2 Peter 2:14–22)
These terrible words are the New Testament counterpart of what Jeremiah is dealing with in this chapter. “. . . having a heart exercised in covetousness” (2 Peter 2:14 rv ). Covetousness means the lust of possessing according to my affinities. In reading God’s Word be careful of being guided by affinities instead of by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes us face facts for which we have no affinity.
The adversaries of Jeremiah ask in mockery, “What is the burden of the lord? ” ( Jeremiah 23:33), and he is told to say that God will avenge the sneer not only on the person, but on his house as well (cf. Matthew 18:6).
Verse 35 is God’s instructions to Jeremiah as to how the prophecy is to be spoken of, viz. , they are to inquire with reverence, not with ridicule. Why should not other people have revelations from God as well as you? The notion that others are sure to go wrong springs from a wrong disposition. “For ye have perverted the words of the living God” (23:36). Never ridicule the way in which people say God guides them; all you know is that God does not guide you like that, but never ridicule. Never bring in your natural affinities to put you on a superior platform for judging others. God has a thousand ways of guiding, and His way for you.
Verse 39 pronounces three terrible results of their mockery—”I will utterly forget you. ” “I will forsake you. ” “I will . . . cast you out of My presence. “
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 8 October 1939 no . 7
notes on Jeremiah
What worth to God?
Jeremiah 24
What seest thou, Jeremiah? ( Jeremiah 24:3)
The estimate a Christian must hold of his own value is what he is worth to God. You cannot judge whether you are right with God by His blessings because “He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. ” God is not meant to bless us; the vital question is—What am I worth to God? In times of affliction am I giving way to self-pity? am I badgering the throne of God for Him to bless me, or saying “Though He slay me, yet will I wait for Him” (rv )?
1. Prophetic Inward Vision ( Jeremiah 24:1–2)
“The Lord shewed me. . . . “—it was an inward vision, seeing with the eyes of the spirit. In order to under- stand prophetic language we must have the Spirit which gives the vision, viz. , the Spirit of God. The Lord caused Jeremiah to see the vision in the spirit, the place of it is given—”before the temple of the lord”; and also the time—”after that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah . . . to Babylon” (see 2 Kings 24:12).
2. Pictorially Inspired Voice ( Jeremiah 24:2–3)
The question, “What seest thou, Jeremiah? ” is the call for Jeremiah to state clearly to himself what it is he sees. “Behold, two baskets of figs set before the temple of the lord” (rv)—these symbolise the people as they appear before God. They had been trying to bring wrong things to the altar, and now God is saying He will destroy the evil and wrong out of the nation. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1 rv). This verse refers to an abiding law, individually and nationally, viz. , we cannot consecrate to God anything that is sinful. We cannot present our bodies “a living sacrifice” to God unless we have been cleansed from sin; He won’t have them. The call in this verse is not for sanctification, but for the service of the sanctified. We can never begin to be of worth to God in service until we have been through what is represented in the atoning sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why the majority of us are of no worth to God. We are of no value to God until we enter into the experience of instantaneous, continuous sanctification, then our “spiritual worship” (rv mg) is the offering of ourselves “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, ” and we no more bother about ourselves. God makes the work we do for Him the means of getting us to the place where we are willing to be purified.
3. Interpretation of the Symbol ( Jeremiah 24:4–7)
“And I will build them, . . . and I will plant them. ” The “building” and “planting” refer to the spiritual regeneration of the people as well as to restoration to former well-being. “And I will give them an heart to know Me, that I am the lord: and they shall be My people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto Me with their whole heart, ” so that they may be in truth God’s people. The chastisement of good people comes through their vicarious identification by God with bad people. The prophets Jeremiah and others went into captivity with the people of God. “For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth. ” God says, “If you are My children you will stand by and endure the suffering falling on others; remember My eye is upon you, stand true to Me no matter what the providential order of tyranny around you may be. ” Many of us are spiritual bastards, we don’t endure chastening, we either sulk or we say it is the devil. The time to “follow after peace” (rv) is not when the bless- ing of God is ostensibly on us, but when the blessing of God is not on us because of the wrongdoing of the crowd we belong to. When the chastisement comes, most of us say, “Well, this is pretty hard lines on me! ” Be there in the providence of God as a vicarious sufferer.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 8 November 1939 no. 8
notes on Jeremiah
The day of the lord
Jeremiah 25–26
For the Lord hath a controversy with the nations. ( Jeremiah 25:31)
In the Bible the Day of the lord is an awful day, a day of the final vindication of goodness and final establishment of righteousness. Judgement is never to be interpreted on the line of personal vindictiveness; from God’s standpoint judgement is the grandest fulfilment of His purposes. There is only one triumphant will at the heart of all things, and that will is God’s. Every power is under God’s control; the devil is not behind God (cf. Isaiah 37:29).
1. The Programme of Calamity ( Jeremiah 25:12)
For “three and twenty years” Jeremiah has been speaking to the people the word of the Lord, “rising up early and speaking; but ye have not hearkened”; and now from news from the outside, they begin to see that what Jeremiah said was true. God’s judgements are conditional.
(a) The Breath of Deity (25:1–14; cf. 2 Peter 1:21)
The word of the Lord hath come unto me. (25:3) The prophets were holy men, not mechanisms; they were “moved by the Holy Ghost” to say what they did. Each prophet had a distinct characteristic of his own, they were not all “moved” in the same way. We are not meant to be “channels only, ” we are infinitely more responsible than “channels. ” Imagination in a prophet is the power to see in the spirit what the Spirit of God wishes him to see.
(b) The Book of Doom (25:15–26)
Take the cup of the wine of this fury at My hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it. (25:15) The figure of a cup is common in Old Testament prophecy and has reference to the Divine chastise- ment about to be inflicted (cf. Isaiah 51:17–22; Ezekiel 23:31–33; Habakkuk 2:16). Jeremiah 25:16 refers not only to the figure but to its actual fulfilment—”And they shall drink, . . . and be mad, because of the sword that I will send among them. ” War with its horrors so stupefies the people that they are helpless. In the Bible war is always a judgement of God on His own people. Jeremiah performs the duty commanded by the Lord—”Then took I the cup at the Lord’s hand, and made all the nations to drink. ” Then comes the list of the nations on which the judgement is to fall, beginning with Jerusalem. After all the kings on whom the king of Babylon is to execute judgement have been mentioned, he himself must drink the cup of wrath (25:26).
2. The Prophet and the Peril ( Jeremiah 26)
Jeremiah continually warned the people that if they did not repent and come up to God’s standard for them, He would blight all that they possessed, including Jerusalem and the temple. That was what enraged them against Jeremiah. They said he used his prophetic right to tell an untruth; for, they argued, God would never destroy His own holy city or the Temple in which He was worshipped (26:11). Any position before God based on a foundation other than living in the light of God and depending upon Him, is doomed to destruction. Take it personally, unless we keep in the light with God there is no guarantee that He will not leave us. How much do we depend on God and how much on our surroundings? We continually ask the question, “Hath any of the rulers believed on Him? ” (rv) until we see the Lord for ourselves, then we have strength to go “without the camp, bearing His reproach. ” Verses 1–2 reveal the underlying secret of Jer- emiah—he was under the command of God. “Thus saith the lord; stand . . . and speak . . . all the words that I command thee . . ; keep not back a word” (rv ). Verses 3–11 reveal the prophet’s undeflected obedience. “When Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all that the lord had commanded him . . . , the people laid hold on him, saying, Thou shalt surely die” (rv ). Verses 12–24 reveal the undeterred courage of the prophet in standing for God—there was no defiance about Jeremiah, only superb self-effacement. Our Lord said, “If My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight. ” There was no “fight” in Jesus, neither is there to be any in His ser- vants; His courage was superbly moral. The same is true of Jeremiah.
From The Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 8 December 1939 no . 9
notes on Jeremiah
The burden of the yoke
Jeremiah 27
Make thee bonds and yokes, and put them upon thy neck. ( Jeremiah 27:2)
“In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim . . . came this word unto Jeremiah from the Lord . ” It was a super- natural command, not a sensational speculation on the prophet’s part. It is perilously easy in this present dispensation to receive the inspiration of the Holy Ghost and yet not be true to God. There is an optimism born not of the Holy Ghost but of man’s fancies, whereby he deals with the future and refuses to live a spotlessly holy life in the present. The servants of God are faithful overcomers in the present circumstances, no matter what forces of evil may be abroad. Our Lord always uncovered the controlling disposition of men (cf. Matthew 23:25–27); the true prophets of God did the same, and so do the saints to-day.
God does not act according to His own precedents, therefore logic or a vivid past experience can never take the place of personal faith in a personal God. It is easier to be true to a conviction formed in a vivid religious experience and say, “I will never alter that, ” than to be true to Christ, because if I am true to Christ, my convictions will have to be altered. Unless the personal experience leads to a life, it will turn us into fossils, instead of being “witnesses unto Me. ” Some of us are no good unless we are kept in the circumstances in which our convictions were formed, but God is constantly stirring up our nests that we may learn that the only simplicity there is is not the simplicity of a logical belief, but “the simplicity that is in Christ, ” the maintained simplicity of a relationship with Christ that is never altered in any circumstance.
There is no evidence of immediate opposition to Jeremiah for the simple reason that moral power is greater than physical force; Jeremiah’s moral integrity paralysed the people’s action. When opposition does strike the servant of God, it is by God’s permissive will. As long as men count themselves Christians on any other ground than that they are free from them- selves and the identified bond slaves of Jesus Christ, so long will they despitefully use the servants of God. Jeremiah entered into identification with the judgement of God on the crowd; we separate our- selves from the crowd, what we should separate our- selves from is the wrong disposition of heart. If we bear the yoke of Christ we shall render the power of wrong impotent by living under it in the power of right. The moral power of the Spirit of God is “mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds”; it works not like leaven, but like dynamite.
The Spirit of God teaches us to bear the yoke of Christ even under the yoke of a tyrant. “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls” (Matthew 11:29; cf. Philippians 4:3; 1 Timothy 6:1; Acts 15:10). Wear the yoke of Christ under every other yoke.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 8 January 1940 no . 10
notes on Jeremiah
Sealed orders
Jeremiah 28
And the prophet Jeremiah went his way. ( Jeremiah 28:11)
Sealed orders, from Abraham on, are always a sign from God. Abraham “went out, not knowing whither he went. ” God does not act according to His own precedents, therefore logic, or a vivid past experience, can never take the place of personal faith in a personal God. Never try to explain God until you have obeyed Him, and never accept an explanation of any way of God which involves what, in your best mood, you would scorn as false and unfair in a man. The only bit of God we understand is the bit we have obeyed. To the intellect it is absurd to call God loving and just, but immediately you obey God you begin to discern that God is a God of absolute love and justice. The discernment is a satisfaction not to your intellect but to your life. Never be surprised if there are whole areas of thinking that are not clear, they never will be until you obey ( John 7:17). Jeremiah’s words “Amen: The lord do so” (28:6) are not ironical. Jeremiah was without the lust for self-vindication, he would gladly have been led to see that his prophecy of calamity was wrong.
The Apostle Paul exhibits the same marvellous self- effacement as Jeremiah (see Romans 9:3). We never gain any knowledge by intellectual curiosity, but only as a relationship of simplicity to God is it maintained. In John 9 Our Lord was deal- ing with religious teachers who had known God’s way in the past but they were blind to His ways in the present. Jesus said unto them, “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth” ( John 9:41). Our Lord’s phrase “blind leaders of the blind” was used of those who built their teaching as to how God would act in the future on their knowledge of how He had acted in the past, instead of on a personal knowledge of God. Never come to this conclusion—I am not likely to go wrong, but you are and I must warn you. The duty of every Christian (and it is the last lesson we learn) is to make room for God to deal with other people direct as He deals with us; we will limit them and try to make everyone in our mould.
We have to keep in unbroken touch with God and give every soul the same freedom and liberty before God as God gives us. “Nevertheless hear thou now this word that I speak in thine ears, and in the ears of all the people” ( Jeremiah 28:7). Hananiah would not listen to God’s “darkness” (see Jeremiah 28:10–11). Darkness is the time to listen. No silence is so profound as the silence that falls on a soul that has quenched the Spirit of God by concentration on religious convictions. Many a Christian worker who began as a blazing fire for God has become extinguished because he would not walk in the light of the Lord. “Lest that by any means . . . I myself should be a castaway. ” If the mighty Apostle spake words like these, it behoves us to remember that it is possible for any one of us to be cast away as a servant of God. Our only safety is in concentration on God with nothing between.
When the call of God first comes it is not devotion to God that appeals to us, but the sense of the heroic, it thrills us to give up everything for Jesus. Then when we are led into the wilderness alone, we learn how rarely we live in the light of honesty before God. We talk too much about heroism because the majority of us are only barely honest. There is only one heroic Figure, the Lord Jesus Christ. We take the pattern and print of the crowd we have been brought up with and persuade ourselves that we are there. We have to get out of the complacency of superiority that is apt to come when the grace of God has done any- thing for us; the most the grace of God succeeds in doing for us is to make us honest. There is only one holiness, the holiness of God, and unless that holiness is imparted to us by direct identification, we are not even honest.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol . 8 February 1940 no . 11
notes on Jeremiah
Other Worldliness In this world
Jeremiah 29:1–14
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord. ( Jeremiah 29:11) When we are worldlings we are tempted to be spiritual, and in devotional surroundings we are tempted to be worldly. It is the relationship on the inside that produces goodness, not external surroundings. God never safeguards from without, He garrisons from within. Unless this principle is understood, we shall build on a wrong foundation.
1. Divine Order of Degradation ( Jeremiah 29:4; cf. 1 Thessalonians 1:10)
“. . . whom I have caused to be carried away captive from Jerusalem unto Babylon” (rv ). The great message of the prophets is that evil and tyranny are there by the permissive will of God, there is never any room for thinking that these things happen by chance (cf. Isaiah 45:7). Never tie God up in His own laws; He is never guided by precedence. If a prophet is more concerned with logic than with loyalty to God, he will always mislead. “and to wait for His Son from heaven. ” In the early days of Christianity, as well as in our own day, the providential order of tyranny was a most significant thing, and the great word of the Apostle Paul was to endure it with patience. Some people are so impatient and full of criticism of the present order of things that they tell us Jesus Christ is coming again at once; others are cynical and say, “Where is the promise of His coming? ” We have no control what- ever over external history; God has, and as saints we have to wait in patience wherever we are placed in the providential order of tyranny.
2. Devoted Obedience in Dust ( Jeremiah 29:5–7; cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:10–11)
“Build ye houses, and dwell in them; . . . And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captive, ” Jeremiah commands the people to obey God’s order in the dust and dirt of captivity. When we become rightly related to God we are loosened from everything around us, and the danger is to imagine we have to get out of the world. Our Lord did not pray that His disciples should be taken out of the world, but that they should be kept from the evil. It is nothing but unmitigated cowardice to get out of the world; we have to remain unspotted in the midst of it. “Do you mean to tell me I can live a holy life there? ” If you cannot, the grace of God is a fiction. External surroundings make no difference to our inner life, but our inner life makes a telling difference on our surroundings. (See Philippians 2:15. ) A sunbeam may shine into a hovel, but it can never be soiled. Let God engineer your circumstances where He likes, and you will be kept as the light.
3. Declaration of Divine Plans ( Jeremiah 29:8–11; cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:3)
Jeremiah warns the people against listening to prophets who prophesy falsely—”I have not sent them, saith the lord . ” Our problem is not one of proportion: how much worldliness can I live in? but of spiritual insight which will enable me to live a holy life in the midst of worldliness, looking for the fulfillment of God’s promises. The man who builds a temple on the slopes of a mountain is a fool; the only thing that is not out of place on a mountain is a cottage, because it does not ape the mountain. With the great towering world all around them God’s children are as cottages tucked away in safety, and the word of Our Lord comes, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. ” The great craze to-day is work: God’s word is “wait. ” Patience means standing under and enduring until the strain is past. The Spirit of God never adopts the tactics of the world. Remain uncrushably true to Jesus Christ wherever the providential order of God places you.
From The B Bible Training Course Monthly journal
vol. 8 March 1940 no . 12
notes on Jeremiah
How long?
Jeremiah 29:15–32
I know, and am a witness, saith the Lord . ( Jeremiah 29:23)
God is bound to destroy sin. Suffering is not the opposite of sin: good is the opposite of sin. Evil is eternally evil, and suffering can never atone for it. Sorrow and confession and self-abasement alone will make up for the evil. Never apologise for God.
1. The Outlook Is the Background of Life ( Jeremiah 29:15–20; 2 Peter 2:15)
The background of personal and of national life determines its outlook. The false prophets had as the background of their life the idea that they were the people of God and He would never punish them.
Verses 15–16. This is the opportunism of temperament, i. e. , serving the times in which we live according to our particular temperament and prejudices, upholding those views which are expedient. This danger besets every one of us—”It is expedient not to say certain things”; “preserve your cause by diplomacy. ” Beware of coming under the curse of Meroz, who came not “to the help of the lord against the mighty, ” by judging it expedient to do nothing. We prefer to quote Gamaliel rather than Paul. Gamaliel’s advice is not the advice for a Christian; “Who is made to stumble, and I burn not? ” (rv ) is the Christian attitude.
Verses 17–18. God will make the false prophets a thing to shudder at. The reaction on the sinner of God’s destruction of his sin is the realisation of its hideousness; all his complacency goes (cf. Psalm 39:11). Sin must go at all costs. God is ever severe in His handling of His children who will cling to sin through the pride of heredity. The people of Jeremiah’s day refused to see this, they did not think God would punish them, and God had to lay His hand upon them until the last possible strand of sin was destroyed. Verses 19–20. Beware of being misled by affinities for certain aspects of God’s truth, it always makes us liable to be deluded. Every movement of the Spirit of God springs from the same source, and the counterfeit is to try and make the effect of one revival the cause of another. To exploit God’s word by curiosity instead of relying on the Spirit of God is ever misleading; obedience is the only line of illumination. If you pry into truths before God has engineered the circumstances in which those truths can be obeyed, you will go wrong. A clever exposition is never right, because the Spirit of God is not clever (cf. Matthew 11:25).
2. The Overlook Is the Backing of Life ( Jeremiah 29:21–23; 2 Peter 2:17–22)
. . . which prophesy a lie unto you in My name.
What is overlooked in the programme of a life is at once the measure of its strength and its weakness. These prophets overlooked the fact that Jeremiah was the prophet of God. There were true prophets, but these verses refer to the false ones, and God says that they are growing worse. When God takes His hand off a bad man, He lets the devil do his worst. 2 Peter 2:17–22. These terrible words, rugged and shocking in their intensity, refer to the abiding peril of an official man of God who is not proving him- self God’s man; he will end in worse corruption than the man who has not an official position. The peril begins whenever I take this attitude—”Remember who I am. ” There is only one safety, a life hid with Christ. The great need is to be God’s servant, not merely His instrument (Matthew 7:21).
3. The Oversight of the Blessed Life ( Jeremiah 29:24–32; 2 Peter 3:11)
That God guards His own is true of the least and the greatest of His children (Matthew 18:6). Jeremiah’s life and character is a proof of this. Jeremiah stood fearlessly for God; a servant of God must be unbribed. Neither a prophet nor a poet can be paid for their work; if they are, they become time-servers, and the community to which they belong ought to have the right to turn them out. The prophets in Babylon were doing their best to keep up the heart of the people, and one can understand their indignation with Jeremiah’s prophecy. He is told to tell the prophet Shemaiah that he shall not share in the blessing which the Lord will yet bestow upon His people—”because he hath taught rebellion against the lord. “
But how many there are among our ministers, and how many there will be, eager on all questions of the day, frank and friendly and fearless, active and kind, but with very little about them that suggests the powers of the world to come. They die and are mourned, but their places are soon filled and they are forgotten. But men return again and again to the few who have mastered the spiritual secret, whose life has been hid with Christ in God. These are of the same religion, whatever differences there may be in their theology, they are of the old time religion hung to the nails of the Cross.
Robert Murray McCheyne