Jeremiah 5:3-8 O LORD, are not your eyes on the truth? you have stricken them, but they have not grieved; you have consumed them… This might not unfitly be called one of the lamentations of Jeremiah. The words may suggest to us the consideration of a subject more or less belonging to all of us, namely, the danger of unsanctified or unimproved afflictions. The remedies of heaven cannot be inoperative; they must aggravate the maladies which they are not allowed to heal, and will make the face harder than a rock, if they induce not a tender and softened heart. I. UNSANCTIFIED OR UNIMPROVED CHASTENING. 1. The first impression in the text seems to set forth that misuse of it which comes of insensibility. "Thou has stricken them, but they have not grieved; Thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction." The language may be taken to describe, not so much the receiving of correction in the spirit of defiant and avowed contempt, as the act of setting lightly by affliction, of not bestowing upon it the attention it deserves, having no reverence for its Author, and no consideration for its design or end. A calamity may visit us, but we think only of its human author; sickness may lay us prostrate, but science is sufficient to explain how it came, — it is chance or a skilled hand that causeth the shaft to pierce between the joints of the harness, and there is some poison in the atmosphere which has caused the withering of our favourite gourd. Thus, placing secondary agencies before our eyes, we can see no further, and look no higher. We see, then, why God was angry with the Jews, and why He will be angry with us, when His chastisements are received with unreflecting indifference. It is that, whether avowedly or not, such insensibility amounts to atheism. On this view — unavowed, of course — is based the indifference of unconverted men under chastisement: they feel that it is not correction, but the natural result of some law which no one can help. Why should they grieve at that which comes of an unhindered, self-governing, moral necessity 2. But the text adverts to a yet more offending and presumptuous deportment under affliction, namely, when the chastisements of God are received in a stouthearted, rebellious, defying spirit. Not only have they refused to receive correction, but they have made their faces harder than a rock. In this case, as we see, God is net left out of sight. On the contrary, He is believed and felt to be the Author of all permitted sufferings. The awful impiety is, that He is regarded as the unjust Author. We stand amazed at the impiety of that Roman emperor, who, because the lightning flash interrupted the pleasures of his banquet, feared not to hurl his blasphemous reproach against the powers of heaven. But let us consider how much of the spirit of these men is in us, when we indulge in angry chafings at the arrangements of Divine Providence; full of fury, like a wild bull in the net, or fretting as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke. How often do you find people under bitter reverses angry and out of humour with everybody about them; with friends who have had nothing whatever to do with their trouble, nay, who perhaps are trying all in their power to lighten them; but the fire of anger is in their bosom, and it must vent itself somewhere; it would vent it on God if it dared, but this is too dreadful to think of; yet it is with Him that they are at anger, and the thought of the heart is as much theirs as ever it was Jonah's, that they do well to be angry. Extreme, therefore, as the ease of the text may seem to be, it is an extreme to which any rebellious thoughts may ultimately lead us, if not watched over and prayed against in their first beginnings. II. HOW THESE DREADFUL EFFECTS MAY BE PREVENTED AND THE CHASTENINGS OF GOD TURNED TO A SANCTIFIED ACCOUNT. 1. First, we must he careful to acknowledge the design of God in sending our trials, and do all we can to bring that design about. Our trials may be of different kinds, one man being afflicted with this and another with that. Every heart has its own plague, and every soul its own leprous spot, and the Great Physician mixes our cup accordingly; that is, as pride lifts up the heart, or covetousness enslaves the will, or as vanity fills the mind, as human idols are exalted to Christ's throne, or the love of this present world makes us slothful in the ways of God, does He apportion to each His remedial sorrow, to each His purging fire. Now this being so, can it be otherwise than displeasing unto God, if we take the smiting patiently, but still refuse the correction; if we submit to the discipline, but disregard the profit; if we allow the ploughshare of affliction to go over us, and yet cheek the springing up of those peaceable fruits of righteousness which chastisement yieldeth to them that are exercised thereby? The rod has a voice, and you must hear what it says. 2. Again, in order that chastening may be blessed to us, we must have a care that we do not become weary under it, however long it may continue. He who faints under the Divine correction first makes sure that he shall faint, and then, by casting off all effort, brings about the fulfilment of his own prophecy. He makes himself helpless. The feebleness of his graces arises from want of exorcise. He has hung up his shield of faith, he has cast off his helmet of hope, he wields the sword of the Spirit with an unsoldierly and trembling hand, and then he wonders that he faints in the day of battle. Chastisement thus received will yield no peaceable fruits of righteousness. So far from our trials being designed to supersede the exercise of our spiritual graces, the great battle of our faith is to be fought on this field. 3. In like manner we are in danger of losing the benefit of chastening, when, through immoderate grief, we unfit ourselves for the active duties of life. The connection between our bodily and mental states is so intimate, that long-continued disturbance of the one will always be followed by serious derangement of the other. Hence it is that protracted and cherished griefs are found to produce a general disturbance in our active and intellectual powers; duties are neglected, a state of apathy is induced, and all the higher demands of our social position are made to wait on a sinful and unprofitable grief. Conceive rightly of Him from whom that chastening comes, as of infinite holiness to do nothing unjust, of infinite love to do nothing unkind, of infinite wisdom to do nothing unsuitable to your best, truest, everlasting interests. And then conceive rightly of yourselves, as transgressors from the womb, as children of disobedience, as outcasts by nature from light and hope, and enemies by works from truth and godliness. And then consider what God sends trials for, and the certainty that, received aright, they shall all work together for good. The arrows of God can never miss their aim; with Him there are no bows drawn at a venture; His shafts speed home infallibly. Taken from the quiver of infinite love, winged with purposes of unerring mercy, they make no heart wounds which they do not more kindly heal, and kill nothing in us which were not better dead. (D. Moore, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: O LORD, are not thine eyes upon the truth? thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return. |
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