Jeremiah 9:2














I. IT IS THE NATURAL RECOIL OF A PURE HEART FROM WICKEDNESS. When the knowledge and love of God are in the heart, sin appears more loathsome. The love of goodness will show itself in a hatred of evil, and a desire to be separated from its workers. In some this love of God and goodness overpowers even the natural attachments and ties of life. And it may be carried to such an excess as to become a spiritual disease, in its way as sinful as the causes that give rise to it. Monasticism has its root in a good and proper feeling carried to excess, and without the restraining and modifying considerations that ought to accompany it. In the instance before us (and like instances) -

II. IT SPRINGS FROM NO SELFISH MOTIVE. Jeremiah did not seek for the "luxury" of grief; sufficient the wanderer's tent, or the comfortless caravanserai of the desert. Nor has he any desire to attitudinize. It is a loneliness that shall not be conspicuous; a losing of himself amongst strangers who care not for him and notice him not. Nor did he seek to evade the duties of life. If he separated himself, it was not to escape from the impending dangers he had announced; nor to intermit his spiritual activities. "He wished there to weep for them" (Zinzendorf); to study the problem in fresh and more hopeful aspects; to recover his mental and spiritual calm; to recruit his spiritual energies for a new and more successful effort. So in our own day, the underlying motive must ever determine the lawfulness, the character, and the continuance of our spiritual retirements.

III. GOD DID NOT REBUKE IT, BUT HE DID NOT SEE FIT TO GRATIFY IT. Here the longing, if it ever grew into a prayer, was not answered, at least at once, or in the way conceived of. Whilst the day of grace lasted, and God's people were open to repent and to be influenced by his words, he is detained amongst them. When all possibilities were exhausted, then the dungeon of the king's prison or the shame of the Egyptian exile might serve the purpose. But even then the essential craving was satisfied. There is a longing that is its own answer. To some it is given to experience solitude and spiritual detachment in the midst of the busy throng of transgressors for whom they yet ceaselessly work. This centrifugal tendency may be productive of greater concentration, real compassion, and capacity for usefulness, when it is controlled and overcome by a sense of overmastering responsibility, and a "heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel, that they may be saved." - M.

Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men.
(with Jeremiah 14:8, 9): — In all the fellowship of, the prophets Jeremiah is by far the most unwilling and reluctant. If Isaiah's watchword was "Here am I — send me," Jeremiah's might have been, "I would be anywhere else but here — let me go." It was out of this besetting mood of his that the prayer rose which I have taken as the first of my texts, "Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men, that I might leave my people and go from them." That is not a prayer for solitude. It is some wayside caravanserai or hotel which Jeremiah longs for; and there he would have been far less alone than in his unshared home at Jerusalem. No, it is not a prayer for solitude, but a prayer to be set where a man can enjoy all the interest of life without having any of its responsibility. Oh, to have no other work in life than to watch the street from the balcony window, than to feel the interest and glitter of life, and achieve your duty towards your fellows, by a kindliness and a courtesy that are never put to the strain of prolonged acquaintance! But our prayers often outrun themselves in the very utterance; and Jeremiah's wish, too, carried within it its own denial Look at the words, "That I might leave my people." Emphasise the last two — "My people." They are the answer to Jeremiah's prayer. God had not sent him to earth to be as separate from the life of men as a musing man is from the river flowing past his feet; God had sent him, not to watch life from a balcony, but leaping down to share it; not to live in an inn where a man is not even responsible for the housekeeping, but has only his way to pay. God had begotten Jeremiah into a nation. He had made him a citizen. He had given him a patriot's lot, with the patriot's conscience and heart. So he stayed on where he was in Jerusalem, and the world may have lost certain studies in human life in the great caravanserai of the Lebanon or Arabian desert roads, for wherever he went Jeremiah would not have kept his brain and pen idle. We may even have lost a book, something between Job and Ecclesiastes, but we have gained the book of Jeremiah, the book of the citizen-prophet, and who, because he was a citizen-prophet, and not a caravanserai one, was also a citizen-priest, the first man who entered into the true meaning of vicarious suffering, and therefore stands out clear from all the shadows of the Old Testament — so clear a symbol of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Look now at the main elements of Jeremiah's experience as he thus stood to his post of prophet and priest at Jerusalem. I take these elements to be mainly three.

1. The first was the reality of sin. A prophet has got to begin there, or he had better not begin at all. And he has got to begin there not in order to satisfy some dogma or another, but because the facts are there. There is a kind of preaching about sin far too prevalent in our day, which treats of it doctrinally and not practically, which lays its strength to proving to a man that he must be a sinner, instead of touching his conscience with the knowledge that he is one. But Jeremiah laid his finger on the actual plague spots of the people. He was very definite with these. But there was another note which Jeremiah sounded equally with that on the reality of sin.

2. It was the note of the swiftness and irretrievableness of time where character and salvation are concerned. Live with men in the city, grow old with the same individuals and groups, and learn things — how inexorable habit is; how irrecoverable are the chances of youth; how short and swift is the summer granted to each man's character to ripen in; learn how even the Gospel of the grace of God is just like the sybil of old coming back each time: you have forced him to return with less power of promise and persuasion; and how even repentance — that great freedom of man, that joy of God and the angels — has its times and its places, which, being missed, are not found again, though we seek them with tears. Upon these thoughts the roll of Jeremiah's prophecy rises every now and again with a great sob. What distinguished Jeremiah from all the prophets who had gone before him was that he did not stand on the banks while all Israel rushed rapidly past him irretrievably to ruin, but that he was with the people, taking their reproach as his reproach, and sharing the penalty of their sins.

3. This suffering for the sins of others, being the sin-bearer as well as the conscience of his people, is the third element of Jeremiah's experience. How did he come to it? It is interesting to watch, for in God's providence he was the first forerunner of Christ in this path. Well, first of all he loved his people; he had a very rich, tender heart, and he loved his people with the whole of it. And then God gave him a conscience about them, that conscience of their sin, and of the penalty to which it was leading. It was in the meeting of such a heart and such a conscience that Jeremiah knew how one man can suffer for others. Oh! it is a terrible fate to be the conscience of those you love, to be their only conscience, to feel their sins as you know they do not feel them themselves, and to be aware of the inevitable judgment to which they are so indifferent. Jeremiah often wondered at it. It perplexed him. After clearly stating the causes why God should smite Israel, he would suddenly turn round in his sympathy with the doomed people, and exclaim, like a beaten animal looking up in the face of his master, "Why hast Thou smitten me?" And again, that strange prayer of his, "O Lord, Thou hast deceived me, and I am deceived. Thou art stronger than I." What can we answer to the perplexed prophet except this, that if a man have the Divine gift of a pure conscience and a more loving heart than his fellows, there comes with such gifts the necessary, the inevitable, obligation of suffering. The physical results of Israel's sin Jeremiah did not bear for the people. He bore these with the people in the most heroic and self-denying patience, but he did not do so for or instead of his people. But the spiritual distress, the keener conscience, the agony of estrangement from God, the knowledge of His wrath upon sin — these Jeremiah did bear instead of the dull impenitent Israel. And is it too much to say that it was for his sake that in the end Israel was saved from utter extinction? Now, with this knowledge of what Jeremiah came through, look at his second prayer. The two chief words are exactly the same as before a "wayfaring man": and "Oh that I were in a lodge of wayfaring men"; and the verb "to spend the night," is the same word as the noun "lodge" or "inn" of wayfaring men — literally a place to pass the night. Jeremiah's second prayer, therefore, is just this, that God would be to the people what Jeremiah himself had tried to be.

(Prof. G. A. Smith.)

No prophet commenced labours with greater encouragements than Jeremiah. A king reigned who was bringing back the times of the man after God's own heart. This devout and zealous king was young. What might not therefore be effected in course of years? Schism, too, was at an end since Israel's captivity. Kings of the house of David again ruled over the whole land. Idolatry was destroyed by Josiah in all the cities. Thus, at first sight, it seemed reasonable to anticipate further and permanent improvements.

I. EVERYONE BEGINS WITH BEING SANGUINE. Jeremiah did. God's servants entered on their office with more lively hopes than their after fortunes warranted. Very soon the cheerful prospect was overcast for Jeremiah, and he was left to labour in the dark.

1. Huldah's message fixed the coming fortunes of Judah: she foretold the early death of the good king and a fierce destruction to the unworthy nation. This prophecy came five years after Jeremiah entered office; so early in his course were his hopes cut away.

2. Or, the express word of God came to and undeceived him.

3. Or, the hardened state of sin in which the nation lay destroyed his hopes.

II. RESIGNATION A MORE BLESSED STATE OF MIND THAN SANGUINE HOPE.

1. To expect great efforts from our religious exertions is natural and innocent, but arises from inexperience of the kind of work we have to do — to change the heart and will of men.

2. Far nobler frame of mind to labour, not with hope of seeing fruit, but for conscience' sake, as matter of duty, and in faith, trusting good will be done though we see it not.

3. The Bible shows that though God's servants began with success, they ended with disappointment. Not that God's purposes or instruments fail, but because the time for reaping is not here, but hereafter.

III. THE VICISSITUDE OF FEELING WHICH THIS TRANSITION FROM HOPE TO DISAPPOINTMENT PRODUCES. Affliction, fear, despondency, sometimes restlessness, even impatience under his trials, find frequent expression in Jeremiah's writings (Jeremiah 5:3, 30, 31; Jeremiah 12:1-3; Jeremiah 15:10-18; Jeremiah 20:7-14).

IV. THE ISSUE OF THESE CHANGES AND CONFLICTS OF FEELING WAS RESIGNATION. He comes to use language which expresses that chastened spirit and weaned heart which is the termination of all agitation and anxiety in religious minds. He, who at one time could not comfort himself, was sent to comfort a brother; and in comforting Baruch he speaks in that nobler temper of resignation which takes the place of sanguine hope and harassing fear, and betokens calm and clear-sighted faith and inward peace.

(J. H. Newman, D. D.)

People
Jeremiah
Places
Ammon, Edom, Egypt, Gilead, Jerusalem, Moab, Zion
Topics
Adulterers, Assembly, Band, Company, Crowd, Desert, Leave, Lodging, Lodging-place, Night's, O, Oh, Ones, Resting-place, Travelers, Travellers, Traveller's, Treacherous, Unfaithful, Untrue, Waste, Wayfarers, Wayfaring, Way-faring, Wilderness
Outline
1. Jeremiah laments the people for their manifold sins;
9. and for their judgment.
12. Disobedience is the cause of their bitter calamity.
17. He exhorts to mourn for their destruction;
23. and to trust not in themselves, but in God.
25. He threatens both Jews and Gentiles.

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Jeremiah 9:2

     5279   crowds
     8421   equipping, physical
     8705   apostasy, in OT
     8840   unfaithfulness, to God

Jeremiah 9:1-9

     5550   speech, negative

Library
India's Ills and England's Sorrows
It would seem as if some men had been sent into this world for the very purpose of being the world's weepers. God's great house is thoroughly furnished with everything, everything that can express the thoughts and the emotions of the inhabitant, God hath made. I find in nature, plants to be everlasting weepers. There by the lonely brook, where the maiden cast away her life, the willow weeps for ever; and there in the grave yard where men lie slumbering till the trumpet of the archangel shall awaken
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 3: 1857

"Boast not Thyself of To-Morrow, for Thou Knowest not what a Day May Bring Forth. "
Prov. xxvii. 1.--"Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth." There are some peculiar gifts that God hath given to man in his first creation, and endued his nature with, beyond other living creatures, which being rightly ordered and improved towards the right objects, do advance the soul of man to a wonderful height of happiness, that no other sublunary creature is capable of. But by reason of man's fall into sin, these are quite disordered and turned out of
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

Characters and Names of Messiah
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. S uch was the triumphant exultation of the Old Testament Church! Their noblest hopes were founded upon the promise of MESSIAH; their most sublime songs were derived from the prospect of His Advent. By faith, which is the substance of things hoped for, they considered the gracious declarations
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 1

How the Simple and the Crafty are to be Admonished.
(Admonition 12.) Differently to be admonished are the simple and the insincere. The simple are to be praised for studying never to say what is false, but to be admonished to know how sometimes to be silent about what is true. For, as falsehood has always harmed him that speaks it, so sometimes the hearing of truth has done harm to some. Wherefore the Lord before His disciples, tempering His speech with silence, says, I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now (Joh. xvi. 12).
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

Original Sin
Q-16: DID ALL MANKIND FALL IN ADAM'S FIRST TRANSGRESSION? A: The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him, by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him in his first transgression. 'By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,' &c. Rom 5:12. Adam being a representative person, while he stood, we stood; when he fell, we fell, We sinned in Adam; so it is in the text, In whom all have sinned.' Adam was the head
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

A Sermon on Isaiah xxvi. By John Knox.
[In the Prospectus of our Publication it was stated, that one discourse, at least, would be given in each number. A strict adherence to this arrangement, however, it is found, would exclude from our pages some of the most talented discourses of our early Divines; and it is therefore deemed expedient to depart from it as occasion may require. The following Sermon will occupy two numbers, and we hope, that from its intrinsic value, its historical interest, and the illustrious name of its author, it
John Knox—The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3.

Thoughts Upon Worldly-Riches. Sect. Ii.
TIMOTHY after his Conversion to the Christian Faith, being found to be a Man of great Parts, Learning, and Piety, and so every way qualified for the work of the Ministry, St. Paul who had planted a Church at Ephesus the Metropolis or chief City of all Asia, left him to dress and propagate it, after his departure from it, giving him Power to ordain Elders or Priests, and to visit and exercise Jurisdiction over them, to see they did not teach false Doctrines, 1 Tim. i. 3. That they be unblameable in
William Beveridge—Private Thoughts Upon a Christian Life

The Knowledge of God
'The Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.' I Sam 2:2. Glorious things are spoken of God; he transcends our thoughts, and the praises of angels. God's glory lies chiefly in his attributes, which are the several beams by which the divine nature shines forth. Among other of his orient excellencies, this is not the least, The Lord is a God of knowledge; or as the Hebrew word is, A God of knowledges.' Through the bright mirror of his own essence, he has a full idea and cognisance
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

Jeremiah
The interest of the book of Jeremiah is unique. On the one hand, it is our most reliable and elaborate source for the long period of history which it covers; on the other, it presents us with prophecy in its most intensely human phase, manifesting itself through a strangely attractive personality that was subject to like doubts and passions with ourselves. At his call, in 626 B.C., he was young and inexperienced, i. 6, so that he cannot have been born earlier than 650. The political and religious
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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