Jeremiah 8:3 And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain of this evil family… I. REMEMBER MAN'S NATURAL DREAD OF DEATH. The very force of the prophet's expression here lies in this, that it contradicts the habitual feelings of the human breast. The natural preference is to choose life rather than death; nay, it can hardly be called preference at all. There is an instinctive prompting to ward off everything that may be fatal. Whatever the drawbacks and pains of life may be, life is chosen rather than death. In most instances the suicide is held not responsible for the state of his mind at the time. We must all die indeed; yet death is so alien to every predominating feeling of the mind when in health and prosperous circumstances, that even when death comes near others, it is viewed as if it had little or nothing to do with us. And so when Jeremiah's word came to these people in Jerusalem, they, at least the young and the strong among them, would receive it very incredulously. That things should ever become so bad as to make death desirable would seem to them to show that the threatener of such a doom was overdoing his warnings. II. LIFE MAY BECOME SO FULL OF PAIN AND MISERY THAT THIS NATURAL DREAD MAY BE REVERSED. When the blow was struck and Jerusalem fell into the hands of the hosts from Babylon, thousands would be thankful that, amid so much destruction, their lives were spared. To lose possessions and go into exile would seem a light price to pay for the preservation of life. But with the increased experience of exile itself its dreadfulness became manifest. How could it be otherwise? The captivity and exile were not of an ordinary nation, but of one whose God was Jehovah. These people had been in the enjoyment of peculiar privileges and satisfactions, which they had come to accept as a matter of course; and when they lost them, they would then discern, if never before, something of their true value. It was out of a land of promise, a laud reserved for the people of God, that they had been cast, and no lapse of time could content them to be as other nations. It is just because man has within him such capabilities for enjoying life that he can be driven to the other extreme of desiring death. Life could not be so blessed as Christ holds out the hope of its being, unless there were also the possibility of its being correspondingly wretched. III. It is thus suggested that we should aim at reaching a state of mind such that EITHER LIFE OR DEATH SHOULD BE EQUALLY ACCEPTABLE. To prefer life to death is a natural feeling, but certainly not the feeling which a believer in God and Jesus should have. And to prefer death to life is the feeling which comes after a time of struggling, weariness, pain, and disappointment; but what darkness of the mind does this not prove] what inability to profit by the light which shines in Christ! The Christian medium lies between the two extremes. Not to wish to live, nor to wish to die, but to be in Christ's hands, so that as long as we are living there may be an availing of every opportunity of service, and when we die a fresh proof that faith in the Savior who also died, but rose again, is no deluding vanity. It is one of the glorious aspects of Christ's salvation that he can save men from crying out for death rather than life, just because he can lift them into an experience of joy and peace which overbear the sense of temporal pain and loss. - Y. Parallel Verses KJV: And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain of this evil family, which remain in all the places whither I have driven them, saith the LORD of hosts. |
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