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… The allusion is not to doctrinal truth, or truth in the abstract, but to practical truth as it should exist in the hearts and lives of men. The Lord bade them produce a single truthful man in all Jerusalem, and Jeremiah answers that if truth were to be found the Lord Himself best knew where it was, for His eyes were ever upon it. Look well at this picture of the progress of the deceitful. They begin with being dishonest to their fellow men, and at last they become Satan's commission agents, trappers for the devil, fowlers who ensnare men as bird catchers take the winged fowl. This was the state of affairs in Jeremiah's time. We have not, I trust, quite such a condition of things among us today, as a plague universally prevalent, but we have much of the disease of deceit in all quarters, high and low, and to what a head it may come time alone can show. I. THE UTTER FOLLY OF ALL PRETENCE. 1. Hypocrisy is useless altogether, for God sees through it. The instantaneous imagination which flits across the mind like a stray bird, leaving nor track nor trace, God knows it altogether. 2. Nor is it only useless: it is injurious. You spoil your sacrifice if there be any tincture of the odious gall of hypocrisy about it. Everything about you and me that is unreal God hates, and hates it more in His own people than anywhere else. 3. Moreover, pretence is deadening, for he that begins with tampering with truth will go on from bad to worse. Once begin to sail by the wind of policy and trickery and you must tack, and then tack again and again; and as surely as you are alive, you will yet have to tack again; but if you have the motive force of truth within you, as a steamboat has its own engine, then you can go straight in the teeth of wind and tempest. 4. Falsehood and pretence before God are damnable. I cannot use a less forcible word than that. I have constantly seen almost all sorts of people converted — great blasphemers, pleasure seekers, thieves, drunkards, unchaste persons, and hardened reprobates, — but rarely have I seen a man converted who has been a thorough-paced liar. The heart which is crammed with craft and treachery seems as if it had passed out of the reach of grace. II. THE GREAT VALUE OF TRUTHFULNESS. The great value of it is this — that it alone is regarded by God in matters of religion: His eyes are upon that which is truthful about us. For instance, suppose I say "I repent." The question is — Do I really and from my heart sorrow for sin! The same holds good in reference to faith. A man may say, "I believe," as thousands say their creed, — "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth," and so on. Ah, but do you trust in God with your whole heart! Are you sincerely believing in God and God's Word, and God's Son, and God's Gospel? — refer, if not, all your professed faith is useless. As to love to Christ, you know how very easy it is to sing sweet hymns about love to Jesus, and yet how few are living so as to prove their attachment to the Redeemer. The same truth bears upon all the ordinances of religion. When we professed to worship God, how much praise was there in the song? As much as the heart made. As to prayer. "A large prayer meeting." Yes, but the largeness of the number of attendants is not always a gauge of the quantity and power of prayer. The quantity of heart in the prayer decides its quality. This is equally true of all your private worship. That daffy reading of the chapter is a very excellent thing; but do you read with your soul as well as with your eyes? That morning prayer and that evening prayer, those few minutes snatched in the middle of the day — these are good. I will not wish you to alter the regularity of your devotion, but still it may all be clockwork, godliness with no life in it. Oh, for one single groan from the heart! III. THE INFLUENCE OF TRUTHFUL MEN. 1. It is so great with God that one of them can save a city from destruction. Hence the value of good men in bad localities. When you go into a hamlet or village where there is no religion, do not be so very sorry at your position, for God may have great ends to be served by you. All light must not be stored up in the sun; scatter it over earth's poor lands that need it, lest all the trees of the field die in perpetual night. God blesses us to make us blessings. Ask of God that you may be so sincere, so truthful, that He may bless those round about you for your sake. 2. This influence is such that it never was attributed to any man on account of his riches. No. The Lord is no respecter of persons, and He seeth not as man seeth. Sincerity before God is approved; true reliance upon Christ the Lord accepts: and for this He blesses us, and others through us. 3. And, mark you one other thing. If you are upright before God, and you should happen to fall among people that despise you and reject you — it is a sad thing to have to say, but it is true, and a proof of the great influence of truthful men, — your word, when you speak for God, shall be like fire, and those round about you shall be wood, and it shall devour them. If you are not a savour of life to life to men, you will be a savour of death to death to them. IV. THE NECESSITY AND THE MEANS OF OUR BEING TRUE AND SINCERE BEFORE HIM WHOSE EYES BEHOLD TRUTHFULNESS. 1. These times require it. This is an age of tricks and policies. Oh, the lying puffs you meet with everywhere in books and broadsides innumerable. Meet the prince of darkness with the light; he cannot stand against it. Our times require our sincerity. 2. So does our God also require it. I have already spoken to this, and I need not repeat the solemn strain. 3. So do our souls require it. Our eternal welfare demands it. Oh, there must be no mistake about our being true before God, for when it comes to dying work, nothing will stand us then but sincerity. ( C. H. Spurgeon.) 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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