Jeremiah 15:16 Your words were found, and I did eat them; and your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart: for I am called by your name… It was good advice of a venerable divine to a young man who aspired to be a preacher, when he said to him, "Don't become a minister if you can help it." The man who could very easily be a tradesman or a merchant had better not be a minister. A preacher of the Gospel should always be a volunteer, and yet he should always be a pressed man, who serves his King because he is omnipotently constrained to do so. Only he is fit to preach who cannot avoid preaching, who feels that woe is upon him unless he preach the Gospel, and that the very stones would cry out against him if he should hold his peace. I. In the description of Jeremiah's SECRET LIFE, which consists of his inward reception of the Word of God (which description will answer for ourselves), we have three points. 1. The finding of it — "Thy words were found."(1) We read the Word. Here it is: God's Word is all here, and, if we would find it, we must read it earnestly. As the habit of having a time for prayer is good, so also is the habit of reading the Scriptures. Yet it is a mischievous practice to read a great deal of the Bible without time for thought; it flatters our conceit without benefiting our understanding. The practice of always reading the Bible in scraps is also to be deprecated. (2) But we have not found God's Word when we have read it, unless we add to it an understanding of the Word. Marrow bones, who can feed on them? Split them, take out the marrow, and then you have luscious food. Merely verbal utterances, even though they be the utterance of the Holy Spirit, cannot feed the soul. It is the inward meaning, the truth that is revealed, which we should labour after. (3) To find God's Word means sometimes the discovery of select and appropriate words to suit our case. "Thy words were found." You know when you have lost your key, and your cupboard or your drawer cannot be opened, you send for a locksmith, and he comes in with a whole bunch of keys. First he tries one — that does not fit; then he tries another — that will not do; and the good man perseveres, perhaps with twenty keys, it may be with fifty. At last he gets the proper key, which springs the lock, and he opens your treasure for you. Now Scripture to us is much of the same nature. We have many promises in the time of trouble, and it is a great blessing to find the promise that suits our case. (4) "Thy words were found"; that is, I felt I had got a hold of them; I knew I had got them; I had discovered them — they were Thy words to my inmost soul. They have come to us with a power that no other words ever had in them, and we cannot be argued out of our conviction of their superlative excellence and Divine authority. We have found the words of our heavenly Father: we know we have, for children know their own father's voice. 2. A second view of the inner life must now be considered. "Thy word was found, and I did eat it."(1) By that term is signified, first, the prizing of God's Word. When Jeremiah received a sentence which he knew came from God's mouth he prized it, he loved it so that he ate it; he could not lay it aside; he did not merely think of it; he loved it so that he put it into his very self. (2) The term eating implies, moreover, that he derived nourishment from it. It is delightful to sit down and suck the soul out of a text, to take it and feel that not the letter only but the inner vitals of the text are our own, and are to be received into the very nature of our spirit, to become assimilated with it. (3) But the figure of eating means more, it sets forth an intimate union. That which a man eats gets intertwined with his own self, his own personality. The diligent believer when he knows the Word, learns it so well that he assimilates it into his own being. Let me illustrate this by a fact which is notable in a lower sense in certain natural persuasions. When Galileo was convinced that the world moved, they put him in prison for it, and in his weakness he recanted, and said he believed it stood still and that the sun moved, but the moment, he got away from his persecutors he stamped his foot, and said, "But it does move, though." And so he who knows the truth as it is in Jesus has even a higher persuasion than that which ruled Galileo. He cannot belie the truth: he has got it so into himself that he cannot give it up. 3. Notice, then, the third glimpse into the inner life. "It was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart." Nothing makes a man so happy as the Word of God. Nothing makes him so full of delight and peace of soul as feeding upon the Word. II. THE CHRISTIAN IN HIS OUTWARD LIFE, as he is mentioned here — "I am called by Thy name, O Lord God of hosts." 1. The condition of Jeremiah was one which he had attained by his conduct. He was so continually preaching about Jehovah, so constantly insisting upon Jehovah's will, and going upon Jehovah's errands that they came to call him "Jehovah's man," and he was known by Jehovah's name. Now the man who loves God's Word, and feeds on it, and rejoices in it, will so act that he will come to be called a Christian. He will not only be so, but he will be called so. Men will take knowledge of him that he has been with Jesus. To be called "Jehovah's man" was an honour to Jeremiah; and to be called by any of these nicknames, which signify that we belong to God, is an honour to aspire after and not to be regretted. May we all win some opprobrious name, and wear it as our title of holy chivalry. 2. But this is a name, in the second place, which is involved in the profession of every Christian. "I am called by Thy name, O Jehovah, God of hosts." Of course you are so called, if your profession be true. Oh, that we remembered always that we are Christians, and therefore must always act up to the name that is named upon us. God grant you, friends, that, in the power of the eating of God's Word, you may be constrained to act ever as becometh those upon whom the name of Christ is named. 3. Once more, this word may be used in the sense which arises out of the Gospel itself. "I am called by Thy name, O Lord God of hosts." I belong to Thee. When they gather up the nations, and they say, 'This man belongs to Babylon, and that man to Assyria, and that man to Egypt,' I belong to Thee, and am called by Thy name, O Lord God of hosts. What a comfort this is — we who believe in Christ belong to God. We are His portion, and He will never lose us. "They shall be Mine," saith the Lord, "when I make up My jewels." You are poor: but you are Christ's. Does not that mitigate your poverty? You are sick: but you are God's. Does not that comfort you? The poor lamb lies in the cold field, but, if it belongs to a good shepherd, it shall not die. The sheep is sick, or it has wandered; but, if it belongs to an Omnipotent Shepherd, it shall be healed and it shall be brought back. The name of Christ being named upon us is the guarantee of our present comfort and of our future security. ( C. H. Spurgeon.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O LORD God of hosts. |
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