1.
Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
A TRUE PATRIOT
‘Oh … that I might weep day and night.’
Jeremiah 9:1
How was this one man able to do so much for Israel, to give it no less than six hundred years of life? Because of his character.
We, too, have great tasks to perform. Salt kills corruption and so saves life. Christ says to us, ‘Ye are the salt of the earth.’ Are we giving life to the nation we belong to?
If we wish to know how to do it, let us note what it was that empowered Jeremiah for his bitter, glorious task. Three characteristics are worthy of note.
I. His unbending steadfastness.—His two strongest passions were love of country and love of God. But he made the love of God supreme, and had to suffer abuse, imprisonment, all but death, at the hands of the countrymen he so dearly loved ( Jeremiah 20:7-11). He was, as God had called him to be—an iron pillar. This is what we need in our churches. To save our nation from the love of pleasure we need such ‘iron pillars.’
II. His tender sympathy.—The four chapters, 31–33, are known as the ‘Book of Consolation.’ Where can you find more touching messages than these? ‘Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a pleasant child? My bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord.… Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears.… I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul. Upon this I awaked and beheld, and my sleep was sweet unto me’ ( Jeremiah 31:20; Jeremiah 31:16; Jeremiah 31:25-26). He was a man of a great soul, able and willing to weep with the oppressed and suffering and guilty. He was an ‘iron pillar’ in steadfastness to his God, but he was as a gentle mother to the erring children.
III. His spirituality.—The people had broken the old covenant. It had been written on tables of stone. Jeremiah’s great hope was in looking forward to a New Covenant that was to be purely spiritual. ‘This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. In their heart will I write it.… They shall all know Me.… I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more for ever’ ( Jeremiah 31:33-34).
Here, then, is to be our strength—in unbending steadfastness to God, in tender love for the people, and in having the law and the love of God written on our hearts. Let us see to these three things and we shall become powerful for the pulling down of strongholds.
Illustrations
(1) ‘With the beautiful Temple fell all the hopes and confidence of the Jews. They were carried off into captivity, and it seemed as if the last stay of God’s true worship was gone. (597 and 586 b.c.) But one man was left to build up the ruins. It was Jeremiah. He preserved his faith in the one true God; rallied Israel around that belief as the centre of their national life; and gave them the hope of again enjoying God’s favour. Thus they were kept steadfast in exile, and came back, some sixty or seventy years after (537 b.c.), to their own land with a purified faith. The nation had been at the point of extinction. It was brought back to its fatherland and lived six hundred years. But it sinned once again, and this time against God’s own Son, and was finally shattered in the year 70 a.d.’
(2) ‘Tears, give me tears, as I see the vast population of Great Britain, growing up without the religion that made our land great. When the working classes in growing numbers absent themselves from places of worship; when the youths and maidens turn their backs upon the religion of their fathers; when the little children count their Sunday-schools irksome—what reason there is to weep! When Jesus beheld the city He wept over it.’
(3) ‘Once the voice of joy and thanksgiving had been heard in Jerusalem, but now on every side there was bloodshed, and the patriot prophet could only weep incessantly over the slain. A lodge in the wilderness seemed preferable to the most luxurious mansion in the city, better than to continue to associate with the ungodly perpetrators of such crimes. Yet we must not go out of the fray as long as our Captain wants us to remain in it, in dependence upon Him.’
2.
Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.
3.
And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the LORD.
4.
Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour will walk with slanders.
5.
And they will deceive every one his neighbour, and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity.
6.
Thine habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know me, saith the LORD.
7.
Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, I will melt them, and try them; for how shall I do for the daughter of my people?
8.
Their tongue is as an arrow shot out; it speaketh deceit: one speaketh peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in heart he layeth his wait.
9.
Shall I not visit them for these things? saith the LORD: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?
10.
For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the habitations of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned up, so that none can pass through them; neither can men hear the voice of the cattle; both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled; they are gone.
11.
And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons; and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.
12.
Who is the wise man, that may understand this? and who is he to whom the mouth of the LORD hath spoken, that he may declare it, for what the land perisheth and is burned up like a wilderness, that none passeth through?
13.
And the LORD saith, Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein;
14.
But have walked after the imagination of their own heart, and after Baalim, which their fathers taught them:
15.
Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink.
16.
I will scatter them also among the heathen, whom neither they nor their fathers have known: and I will send a sword after them, till I have consumed them.
17.
Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for cunning women, that they may come:
18.
And let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters.
19.
For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, How are we spoiled! we are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because our dwellings have cast us out.
20.
Yet hear the word of the LORD, O ye women, and let your ear receive the word of his mouth, and teach your daughters wailing, and every one her neighbour lamentation.
21.
For death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from without, and the young men from the streets.
22.
Speak, Thus saith the LORD, Even the carcases of men shall fall as dung upon the open field, and as the handful after the harvestman, and none shall gather them.
23.
Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches:
24.
But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.
25.
Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will punish all them which are circumcised with the uncircumcised;
26.
Egypt, and Judah, and Edom, and the children of Ammon, and Moab, and all that are in the utmost corners, that dwell in the wilderness: for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.