You have seen all their malice, all their plots against me. Sermons
I. THE PROCEEDINGS OF THESE ENEMIES. The spirit of vengeance is in their hearts. Jeremiah has spoken steadily against them what Jehovah had laid on him to say. They know the language in which they have been described. It was, of course, just the thing to be expected that bad men should cherish vengeful purposes. And Jeremiah had to bear the consciousness of this - the very painful consciousness that he was the cause, however innocent, of showing up the worst passions in the hearts of others. This spirit of vengeance manifested itself in two ways. 1. Reproach. He was called all sorts of names, held up to derision and execration. He indeed had to reproach, but then there was a measure and dignity in the words he employed. His reproaches were meant to call the reproached ones to repentance. But the reproaches from his enemies meant immediate danger to him - danger from the populace on the one hand, and the authorities on the other. 2. Plotting. Society was just in the state when plots could be carried out with success. Jeremiah did not make one enemy or a few enemies, but many. They were wicked men, and doubtless had subordinates ready to hand for any knavery that was going on. II. JEREMIAH'S BELIEF THAT GOD'S EYE WAS UPON THESE ENEMIES. "Thou hast seen? It is a great matter to feel that God has his eye upon all human wickedness. We may suffer greatly from it, and yet see only a very small part of what he sees. We are forever running into extremes, exaggerating or palliating, magnifying the reality or else diminishing it. We look at things too much in reference to our individual selves, and as they concern us. But God sees things as they truly are, in all their relations and possibilities. Some things are worse than we think them, others better. And so we are enabled to feel that all wickedness is kept within comparatively innocuous limits, The mischief only reaches the outside of what is attacked, for the same God who watches the wicked watches the good at the same time. III. THE PRAYER OF JEREMIAH. (Vers. 64-66.) The vehemence, the almost savageness of these words staggers us. But then, we are not to expect the gentleness of a Christian from an old Jewish prophet. We are not required to justify every petition of God's servants. We have to distinguish between the prophet taken out of himself by inspiration and the man of like passions with ourselves, who has to pass through a long discipline before he can pray as he ought to pray. We may feel here that a silent waiting upon God would have been better than any imprecations of vengeance, and yet, at the same time, we must acquit Jeremiah of anything like personal malice. He wished that the wicked might be recompensed according to the work of their hands. The wicked wished Jeremiah to be treated according to the ferocity of their own hearts. - Y.
O Lord, Thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; Thou hast redeemed my life. 1. The prophet speaks experimentally as of a matter which he had proved for himself in his own case. There is no true understanding of the truths of God except by a personal experience of them.2. Observe how positively he speaks. "Thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul." Let us, by the aid of the gracious Comforter, shake off those doubts and fears which so much mar our peace and comfort. 3. Observe how gratefully the prophet speaks, ascribing all the glory to God alone. Earth should be a temple filled with the songs of grateful saints, and every day should be a censer smoking with the sweet incense of thanksgiving. 4. How joyful Jeremiah seems to be while he records the Lord's mercy! How triumphantly he lifts up the strain! I. DIVINE PLEADING. 1. The Lord pleads our cause in the Court of Providence. The Christian may expect that in the course of providence, when he meets with trouble, God will raise up for him at different times, and in unexpected quarters, persons who will take an interest in him, and be the means of working out his deliverance.(1) Sometimes God pleads the cause of His people by silencing their enemies. When your foot has slipped — when you have spoken unadvisedly with your lips, if you have deeply repented of the sin, you may leave the matter before God, for He will either silence every dog's tongue, or turn their barkings to His glory.(2) At other times our God has pleaded the cause of His people, by raising up friends for them. He does not violate the wills of their enemies, but He wisely turns those wills into the channel of friendship.(3) You see thus, that either by silencing enemies, or else by raising up friends, God can, in providence, plead the cause of your soul; or if men should seem to have even less than this to do with it, He knows how, by special providences, to bring you out of the depth of your difficulties. No Christian man, methinks, can look back through many years of his life without observing some strange and singular workings of the Divine hand, by which, in an unexpected manner, God has wrought His deliverance. 2. Our text may be read with great comfort if we think upon the Court of Divine Law. My soul, triumph thou in thy God! This day rejoice thou with all thy might, for Christ hath prevalently pleaded thy cause, and thou art acquitted — nay, thou art brought in as meritorious, and accepted in the sight of God, through the plea of the Beloved. 3. In the third place, Jesus pleads the cause of my soul in the court of conscience, which is a minor imitation of the great Court of Heaven. Foul and vile I am, and yet I am perfect in Christ Jesus: lost, ruined, and undone in the first Adam, but saved and redeemed — made to sit in heavenly places, in the second Adam. Ah! doubts and fears! Where are ye now, when Jesus pleads in my soul? 4. Jesus pleads our cause in the Court of Heaven. A poor man once wished to have a favour of a great one. This great lord had a son — a very kind and condescending one, who spoke to the poor man, and said, "If you will write a petition to my father, he is very gracious, and he will be sure to" grant it; but that you may have no doubts about the success of your petition, give it to me, and I will take it in my own hand up to my father's house for you, and make your case my own. I win say to him, "My father, hear this poor man's petition, not for his own sake, but consider it as mine; do me the personal favour and kindness of hearing this man's prayer, as though it were my prayer; for, indeed, I make it mine:" The poor man wrote out his petition, but when he had finished it, "Alas!" he said to himself, "this will never do to present before the great one; it is so full of errors; I have blotted it with my tears, and where I have tried to scratch out a word which I have spelt wrongly, I have made it worse, and have so badly worded the whole petition, that! am afraid the great one will throw it in the fire, or never notice it." "But," said his friend, "I will write it out in a fair clear hand for you, so that there shall be no blots and no blunders; and when I have done so, I will do as I have said — I will take it in my own hand, put my own name at the bottom of it, with your name, and will offer it as our joint petition; and I will put it upon this footing, 'My father, do it for me; not for him, but for me.'" When the poor man saw his petition thus written out, and knew it was in such hands, he went his way, and made sure that the answer must come; and come it did. This is how Jesus Christ has done for you. He takes our poor unworthy prayers and amends them. 5. Jesus will plead the cause of His people, and our heavenly Father will do so too in the last great day of judgment. If you are a true Christian, and you are called to occupy a prominent post in the service of God, expect to lose your character; expect not to have the good opinion of any but your God, and those faithful ones, who, like you, are willing to bear contempt. But what joy it is for all these holy men to know that at the last God will plead the cause of their souls! II. IF THE LORD HATH PLEADED THE CAUSES OF OUR SOUL, WE SHOULD PLEAD HIS CAUSE WHILE WE HAVE ANY BREATH TO PRAY, OR A TONGUE WITH WHICH TO BEAR WITNESS FOR HIM. Beloved, there is a way of bearing witness for Christ which you must adopt — that of witnessing by your consistency of conduct. Holiness is, after all, the mightiest weapon which a Christian can wield. Ire ye holy as Christ is holy. Lastly, we can all plead for God in a private way. Oh! there is a great power in pleading for God with individuals. A man went to preach for seven summers on the village green, and good was done. Joseph sometimes listened to the preacher, but only to ridicule him. There were many souls converted, but he remained as hard as ever. A certain John who had felt the power of truth, worked with him in the barn, and one day, between the strokes of the flail, John spoke a word for truth and for God, but Joseph laughed at him, and hinted at hypocrisy and many other things. Now John was very sensitive, and his whole soul was filled with grief at Joseph's banter; so after he had spoken, feeling a flush of emotion, he turned to the corner of the barn and hid his face, while a flood of tears came streaming from his eyes. He wiped them away with the corner of his smock frock, and came back to his flail; but Joseph had noticed the tears though the other tried to hide them; and what argument could not do, and what preaching could not do, those tears through God the Holy Spirit did effectually, for Joseph thought to himself, "What! does John care for my soul, and weep for my soul? then it is time I should care and weep for it too." Beloved, witness thus for Christ! ( C. H. Spurgeon.) I. TAKE, TO BEGIN WITH, THOSE CAUSES OF THE SOUL IN WHICH SHE ACKNOWLEDGES HERSELF GUILTY. There are a great many ways of trying to explain away the sense of guiltiness in the human heart. There is a rooted reluctance in every soul to take upon the lips frankly, and in the spirit of genuine contrition, the words, "Father, I have sinned." And yet deeper down even than this reluctance lies the conviction that such confession ought to be made. This is the acknowledgment of the men and women of fullest, strongest, ripest nature. You say, Oh, no! I am acquainted with scores of people who have no such consciousness, make no such acknowledgment. They think too well of God to believe that He will ever punish, if indeed it must be conceded that He exists, which they doubt. Yes, it must be admitted that there are a great many such people, and they are often very agreeable people, accomplished, versatile, cultivated it may be; at any rate, people who are, as we say, exceedingly pleasant to meet. The question is, Do such people adequately represent human nature in its heights and depths? Testimony is of weight in proportion to the familiarity of the witness with the facts about which he testifies. To put the ease strongly, picture to yourself an aged man, who has see, n much of the trials and troubles of this mortal life, whose face is seamed with marks that tell of mental struggle, of conflict with doubt, with difficulty, with pain, whose eye has lost the flash that once belonged to it, but keeps still the glow and penetrative power that tell of active life within, call him a-Kempis, if you will, or St. Augustine, or Keble, or Muhlenberg. Now set opposite him some fresh-cheeked, light-hearted, cheery-voiced young fellow, who knows not very much of life, to be sure, but is quick-witted and intelligent, thoroughly well read, informed as to the very latest phase of contemporary thought, literary, social, political, able to instruct you on a thousand points of scholarship in almost any department you may choose. To which of the two, let me ask, should you the more naturally, or with the more confidence turn, were the question to be discussed, not one about rocks or shells, or pictures, or pottery, or artist's proofs, or first editions, but a question of the powers and possibilities of the human heart? Which of them would be the best authority, say you, on such a point as this one before us now, namely, the soul's attitude toward God its Maker as respects innocence and guilt? But now the question comes up, and it is certainly worth looking at, Why should one whoso cause is a guilty cause care to have it pleaded? Why not confess judgment, and take the consequences? "O Lord, Thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul." Is this a thing to be desired, that the Lord should take up or help forward the cause of the offender? High-minded advocates sometimes refuse to defend a criminal when it is perfectly evident that the offence charged was really committed. Let the law take its course, they say. And ought it not to be so in men's relations to their Maker? If they have really broken His law, ought they not to be willing to meet the penalty, instead of expecting or desiring any one to plead their cause? To all which I merely answer that if it be indeed so, then is the word Gospel emptied of meaning, and the title "our Saviour" robbed of all its power to charm. For what element of good tidings is there in the message, Do wrong, and you shall be punished? And what need have we of a Saviour, if there be nothing evil from which it is possible for us to be saved? That ancient sufferer whose words make the substance of our text was reaching after, and had partly grasped, a truth which Jesus Christ came into the world to make so clear that every one might grasp it, namely this, that with God there is forgiveness, not, indeed, the weak-minded, easy-tempered condoning of sin which it is an insult to forgiveness to call by that name, but a costly forgiveness involving intensest suffering. "O Lord, Thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul." If sympathy and that intimate identifying of one's self with another, which advocates know something of, when seeking with all their might to save the life of a defendant in a capital ease — if these can, as they sometimes do, involve keen suffering, can we wonder at men's putting a similar interpretation on the agony and bloody sweat, the Cross and Passion? The truth is, there is a feeling deep down in the human heart that if we are to be helped at all, the help must come from some source higher than our own level. It is all very well to say complacently that men ought to be willing, and not only willing but glad, to bear the punishment of their sins, and so to expiate them. But is it quite certain that when we allow ourselves to use language of this sort we at all appreciate what the punishment our sins deserve would be, or what it would mean to bear it? That Christ came down into human life, dwelt with us, shared our sorrows, toiled, suffered, and all in order that He might be the more closely identified with us, and so the better be our advocate, the better plead the causes of the human soul, — this is the Gospel, this is the glad news, and how different it all sounds from the bare, Be good and thou shalt be rewarded, be bad and thou shalt be punished. II. TAKE NOW THE CAUSE WHERE THE ACCUSED HAS BEEN THE VICTIM OF SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES AND REALLY NOT THE GUILTY PERSON HE SEEMS TO BE. No men escape wholly misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Perhaps it would not be putting the matter too strongly to say that there is probably no time when a man is not in a false position as regards some of those about him; no time when, on all sides, and by every observer, he is seen precisely as he really is. The atmosphere through which men look at the actions and the lives of the other men about them is never so absolutely clear that there is no distortion, no undue foreshortening or misplacement in the picture received into the eye. Ordinarily this is tolerable enough; we expect a certain measure of misunderstanding, are prepared for it, and do not mind encountering it. But there are times in the lives of some men when misapprehension and unjust judgment seem to hem them in on every side. Innocent at heart, and sure that they are innocent, they yet bend and waver under the crushing load of suspicion which adverse circumstance has laid upon their shoulders. Then it is that the soul, helpless to free itself from its calamitous entanglement, calls out to God for aid. And how is it that the Lord does plead the cause of such a soul as this environed one we have in mind? He does it by His providence, by His ordering of events. Our help cometh from the Lord. It is not by cultivating an introspective, self-analysing habit of mind that we are likely to find the way to peace. We are living out these lives of ours too much apart from God. We toil on dismally, as if the making or the marring of our destinies rested wholly with ourselves. It is not so. We are not the lonely, orphaned creatures we let ourselves suppose ourselves to be. The earth, rolling on its way through space, does not go unattended. The Maker and Controller of it is with it, and around it, and upon it. We cannot escape Him. Why should we desire to do so? He knows us infinitely more thoroughly than we know ourselves. He loves us better than we have ever dared to believe could be possible. Conscience-stricken, guilty, perplexed, spoken against, misjudged, there is no one we can turn to with such confidence as to Him; no advocate so trustworthy. He pleads the causes of the soul. (W. R. Huntington, D. D.) 2. Notice how gratefully the prophet speaks, ascribing all the glory to God alone! You perceive there is not a word concerning himself or his own pleadings. He doth not ascribe his deliverance in any measure to any man, much less to his own merits; but it is "Thou." "O Lord, Thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; Thou hast redeemed my life." A grateful spirit should ever be cultivated by the Christian; and especially after deliverances we should prepare a song for our God. Earth should be a temple filled with the songs of grateful saints, and every day should be a censer smoking with the sweet incense of thanksgiving. 3. How joyful Jeremiah seems to be while he records the Lord's mercy. How triumphantly he lifts up the strain! He has been in the low dungeon, and is even now no other than the weeping prophet; and yet in the very book which is called "Lamentations," clear as the song of Miriam when she dashed her fingers against the tabor, shrill as the note of Deborah when she met Barak with shouts of victory, we hear the voice of Jeremiah going up to heaven, "Thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; Thou hast redeemed my life." ( C. H. Spurgeon.) People JeremiahPlaces ZionTopics Designs, Devices, Evil, Hast, Imaginations, Plots, Rewards, Schemes, Thoughts, VengeanceOutline 1. The prophet bewails his own calamities22. By the mercies of God, he nourishes his hope 37. He acknowledges God's justice 55. He prays for deliverance 64. And vengeance on his enemies Dictionary of Bible Themes Lamentations 3:60 5589 trap Library February the Twenty-Fourth Moving Towards Daybreak"He hath brought me into darkness, but not into light." --LAMENTATIONS iii. 1-9. But a man may be in darkness, and yet in motion toward the light. I was in the darkness of the subway, and it was close and oppressive, but I was moving toward the light and fragrance of the open country. I entered into a tunnel in the Black Country in England, but the motion was continued, and we emerged amid fields of loveliness. And therefore the great thing to remember is that God's darknesses are not His goals; … John Henry Jowett—My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year February the Twenty-Fifth the Fresh Eye Solitude, Silence, Submission "And we all do Fade as a Leaf, and Our Iniquities, Like the Wind, have Taken us Away. " To the Reader. Christian Reader The Lord is My Portion. Lam 3:24 The Disciple, -- what is the Meaning and Purpose of the Cross... How Christ is to be Made Use of as Our Life, in Case of Heartlessness and Fainting through Discouragements. The Practice of Piety in Glorifying God in the Time of Sickness, and when Thou Art Called to Die in the Lord. How they are to be Admonished who Lament Sins of Deed, and those who Lament Only Sins of Thought. From his Entrance on the Ministry in 1815, to his Commission to Reside in Germany in 1820 Meditations for one that is Like to Die. Letter xxvi. (Circa A. D. 1127) to the Same Of the Character of the Unregenerate. Question Lxxxii of Devotion The Mercy of God Covenant Duties. "Take My Yoke Upon You, and Learn of Me," &C. "Thou Shall Keep Him in Perfect Peace, Whose Mind is Stayed on Thee, Because He Trusteth in Thee. " No Sorrow Like Messiah's Sorrow The Work of Jesus Christ as an Advocate, Links Lamentations 3:60 NIVLamentations 3:60 NLT Lamentations 3:60 ESV Lamentations 3:60 NASB Lamentations 3:60 KJV Lamentations 3:60 Bible Apps Lamentations 3:60 Parallel Lamentations 3:60 Biblia Paralela Lamentations 3:60 Chinese Bible Lamentations 3:60 French Bible Lamentations 3:60 German Bible Lamentations 3:60 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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