《The Biblical Illustrator – Jeremiah (Ch.30~36)》(A Compilation)
30 Chapter 30
Verses 1-24
Verse 7
Jeremiah 30:7
It is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.
Jacob’s trouble
There is not a malady in human life, but we find its antidote in the Bible; not a wound, but we find its balm; not a spiritual sickness, but we find its remedy there. If there is no time of trouble to Jacob, what deliverance could Jacob want? Of what use is a promise of rest to the weary and heavy laden, unless a man finds himself burdened and oppressed? A promise of salvation is only of value for those who feel their need of it; and an assurance of deliverance is only precious to such as are made sensible of their danger. The language of our text relates primarily and literally to the languishing state of the Church--to the captivity of Israel’s tribes--to Jacob’s trouble on account of the desolation of their city, and the destruction of their temple; and it is not only promised to them that their trouble should be blessed to them, but also that they should be saved out of it. We notice, first, the time of Jacob’s trouble; secondly, the timely deliverance promised, “He shall be saved out of it”; and thirdly, the evidence and display of the truth and faithfulness of God towards Israel and Jacob.
1. Some may inquire why the truth and faithfulness of God should be brought forward. I do not intend to present you with a catalogue of Jacob’s troubles; they are too numerous. I will, however, mention a few.
2. The timely deliverance. He shall be saved out of it. There is a threefold method in which God saves Jacob out of his trouble. Sometimes bycausing his troubles to terminate with a word. He speaks the word, “Peace, be still,” and not s wave rolls, nor s wind breathes. Sometimes He causes their troubles to terminate by taking the sons of Jacob out of them to glory, and raising them above the reach of them for ever. Sometimes by teaching them how to trust and triumph in Himself; as David says, “Though I walk in the midst of trouble Thou wilt revive me.” What a marvellous deliverance God effected for His people in the days of bloody Mary. Then there were multitudes of godly men in prison, under sentence to the fire, and expecting the faggots every moment to be kindled, when God suddenly summoned that cruel queen into His presence. Elizabeth succeeded, and His people were rescued Remember, whether trial is domestic, personal, spiritual, temporal, or circumstantial, a Father’s wisdom directs it, a Father’s love superintends it, and a Father’s word will scatter it. And remember, whatever method God may adopt to save you out of your trouble, you, as a son of Jacob, will be enabled to say, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted.” Sometimes He delivers them by teaching them how to trust Him, and triumph in Him in the midst of troubles. Look at Gideon and his conquest over the Midianites, without a spear, a bow, dart, javelin, sword, arrow, lance, or any weapon of war--with nothing but lamps and pitchers he overcomes them. How different are thetroubles of Jacob and Esau, of Isaac and Ishmael, of the Christian and the worldling, of a child and an enemy. The troubles of the worldling are not few. He is liable to all the calamities of life. He has no God to flee to, no sympathising High Priest. Place a Christless man in my circumstances, despair and anguish will be his portion; but s man that shall be saved if he has my God. Is there any relation to, any likeness to, Jacob’s sons to be found in you? Is there any distinction between you and Esau? Is there any personal, spiritual difference between you and the world? Can you give an affirmative answer to these questions? If so, the promise and oath of God are on your side; and, however deep or long your troubles may be, you shall be saved out of them. (J. Iron.)
Verse 11
Jeremiah 30:11
I will correct thee in measure.
Correction in measure
I. Thetext gives us God’s law of correction; and remember, first of all, that it is a law. It is not a passion; it is not a surprise on the part of the Ruler Himself: it is part of His very goodness; it is quiet, solemn, inexorable, everlasting. The steadfast law of the universe is, that though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished. This is s law, it is not a caprice; it is a necessity of goodness, and not a burst of passion. All things fight for God; they are very loyal to Him. The stars in their courses utter His testimony; the winds as they fly are vocal with His name; the earth will open her mouth with eager gladness to swallow up the populations that lift their hands against Him. Let us begin with things known, with the patent and indisputable facts of life,--and amongst those facts you will find the hell which follows broken law, the earth that casts out the sour that is not holy,--and thence proceed step by step into the holy place where the altar is, and the speaking blood, and the Father, and the strange light of eternity. There is but one true line of progress: it begins with Moses, it ends with the Lamb--Moses and the Lamb: Law and Grace; and in the last eternal song we shall find in one grand line, “Moses and the Lamb,” a marvellous harmonisation, the up-gathering and reconciliation of all things; the old ark built again; the law within, the mercy-lid covering it. Law and Mercy--Moses and the Lamb--these combine the whole purpose of the movement of the Divine mind and love.
II. So far we have looked at the stern fact of law: we now come to what is said about it. It is a law of measured correction: “I will correct thee in measure.” At this point grace gets hold of law and keeps it back. Law can never stop of itself. The law is the same at the end as at the beginning. It cannot palter, it cannot compromise, it cannot make terms; it grinds, bruises, destroys. If a sinful world were left absolutely to the operation of law, it would be crushed out of existence. But the law is under mercy. We are spared by grace, by grace we are saved. The grace was accomplished before the sinner was created. The atonement is not the device of an afterthought: the Lamb was slain from before the foundation of the world. Have we penetrated the gracious meaning of that astounding mystery? Before we can understand anything of the atonement, we must destroy the very basis and the relations of understanding, as it is too narrowly interpreted; we must think ourselves back of time, of space, of foundations, worlds, sinners. Great is the mystery of godliness--God manifest in the flesh. “Correction in measure” is God’s law now. May the time not come when the measure will be withdrawn and the correction will take its unlimited course? That will be hell, that will be destruction.
III. What is the meaning of this “measure”? It is the Gospel. There is a higher law than the law ofdeath. The law of life is not changed: it is enlarged over all the sins and shortcomings and crimes of life. “Where sin abounds, grace doth much more abound.” Grace says, “There has been great sin: now for my enlargement.” And she enlarges her offers of mercy, and her signs of pity, and her opportunities of return, until the sin flee away--that which is great becomes little. Life is more than death, as the heaven is high above the earth. Death is only a partial law; the universal law is life, and it is for God to set that infinite law in motion. Here we enter upon the mysteries of Deity; here we touch the altar of the atonement. I will accept my chastening; I deserve it. This is my sweet, great faith--that no punishment ever overtakes me that is not a sign of God’s watchfulness, and of God’s care over my life. I have never suffered lose, social dishonour, inward compunction, without being able to say, “This is the Lord’s doing, and not man’s. The man did not know what he was doing to me; he was seized by God and set to do this work for my punishment--my education.” Let us have no whining, no complaining, no retaliation. The man that smote you was sent to smite you. Avenge yourself by deeper confession, by larger, loftier prayer. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Verses 17-19
Jeremiah 30:17-19
I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the Lord.
God’s love in restoration
Most times in Scripture the voice of God is the voice of love. The sterner words come forth as of necessity, on compulsion. How wonderful in the text is the tenderness with which God speaks, what marvellous considerateness for natural human feelings, for thepeculiarities, if I may so speak, of human feelings, when, in promising to renew and to restore, He speaks not only of restoration, but of restoration on the very spot, restoration with the least possible loss, the least possible wrench to natural feeling,--restoration of the city on the ruinous heap, on the old foundation; not merely life again, but life where they had lived of old, the hearth to be raised where the hearth had burned of old, and home where home had been, not one joy or sorrow of association being lost, no change of place, no severance of old ties and thoughts, but all the round of life to begin again on the very site where the days had gone round before. Great mercy would it have been, if the decayed city, with its palaces and homes, had been rebuilt at all, and on other spots, in other places not known or loved before; but as there would have been a certain sorrow in changing the place of habitation, in making a new home, and on looking back on the bare desert plots where the city had once stood, so God, promising restoration, so promises it, that there should not be one cloud upon the heart in seeing the walls again built, not one touch of sorrow and regret to mingle with the joy. And how has it been with the Church of Christ, of which these words of the prophet, in a second and a spiritual sense, doubtless speak? There is no branch of the Church, alas! which has not failed at times in its high part, which has not at times sunk down into listlessness and sloth, which has not at times had an evil activity and an unwise zeal, which has not at times wasted its high gifts, spilt them as it were like water on the ground, suffered its lamp to burn low or to glare with an unhealthy light, which has not at times grudged alms, or been faint in prayer, or worshipped the world, or dressed itself out in gorgeous robes of worldly greatness, or been self-indulgent, or lax in its view of Christian verities. And yet no branch of the Church has been without its calls and recalls, its revival, whether of its spiritual life or of its form and order, its gracious renewings, its waterings from on high with the heavenly dew, that it might again look strong, again battle with the world, again bear noble witness, again do noble deeds, again shew the power of a living faith, again unite itself with heaven by its warm and frequent prayers, again preach Christ crucified by its own crucifixion of all earthly affections, and the manifestation of all saintly ways and tempers. (Bishop Armstrong.)
Blessed promises for dying outcasts
Thepromises of this verse will be exceedingly sweet to those who feel their personal need of them; but those who boast that they are neither sick nor wounded will take no interest in this comfortable word.
I. Taken in connection with the verses which precede it, our text describes a class of men and women who are in a serious plight. These people suffer under two evils. They are afflicted with the distemper of evil, and also by dismal disquietude of conscience. They have broken God’s commandments, and now their own bones are broken. They have grieved their God, and their God is grieving them.
1. They are sick with sin, and that disease is one which, according to the fifth and sixth verses, brings great pain and trouble into men’s minds when they come to their senses, and know their condition before God. Sin felt and known is a terrible kill-joy: as the simoom of the desert smites the caravan with death, and as the sirocco withers every herb of the field, so does a sense of sin dry up peace, blast hope, and utterly kill delight. This disease, moreover, is not only exceedingly painful when the conscience is smarting, but it is altogether incurable, so far as any human skill is concerned. Neither body, soul, nor spirit is free from its taint. At all hours it is our curse and plague; over all places it casts its defiling influence; in all duties it injures and hinders us. To those who know this there is a music sweeter than marriage-bells in these words,--“I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds” The incurable shall be cured; the insatiable malady shall be stayed. How gracious is it on God’s part to pity a creature infected with this vile distemper! How good of Him to regard our iniquity rather as a sickness to be healed than as a crime to be punished!
2. I told you of a double mischief in this plight, and the second mischief is that this person has been wounded for his sin. His wounds are of no common sort, for we are told in the fourteenth verse that God Himself has wounded him. There is such a thing as cruel kindness, and the opposite to it is a loving cruelty, a gracious severity. When the Lord brings sin to remembrance, and makes the soul to see what an evil it has committed in transgressing against God, then the wound bleeds, and the heart breaks. The smart is sharp, but salutary. The Lord wounds that He may heal, He kills that He may make alive. His storms wreck us upon the rock of salvation, and His tempests drive us into the fair havens of lowly faith. Happy are the men who are thus made unhappy; but this for the present they know not, and therefore they need the promise, “I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the Lord.” The blows are not only on the conscience, but when God is in earnest to make men flee from their sins, He will smite them anywhere and everywhere. He takes away the delight of their eyes with a stroke; the child, the husband, the wife, or the friend is laid low; for the Lord will fill our houses with mourning sooner than leave us in carnal security.
II. A special interference. The poor creature is in desperate dolour; but the God of pitying love comes in, and I beg you to notice the result.
1. This interference is, first of all Divine. The infinite Jehovah alone can speak with that grand Ego, and say, “I will,” and again, “I will.” No human physician who was worthy of the name would speak thus. He would humbly say, “I will attempt to give you health; I will endeavour to heal your wounds”; but the Lord speaks with the positiveness of omnipotence, for He has the power to make good His words.
2. Note, that since this interference is Divine it is effectual. What can baffle the Lord? Can anything perplex infinite wisdom? Is anything difficult to almighty power? He speaks, and it is done; He commands, and it stands fast. When therefore God says, I will restore health unto thee,” health will visit the wretch who lies pining at death’s door. When He says, “I will heal thee of thy wounds,” the deep cuts and gashes are closed up at once.
3. Observe that this interposition performs a work which is most complete, for it meets the two-fold mischief. He will heal both disease and wound.
4. Notice, too, how sovereignly free this promise is. It does not say, “I will restore health unto thee if”--No, there is no “if”; and there is no mention of a fee. Here is healing for nothing. Jesus comes to give us health without money and without price, without pence or penance, without labour or merit.
5. Notice that, although it be thus free and unconditional, yet it is now a matter of covenant certainly, for God has made the promise, and He cannot turn from it. To every guilty sinner, conscious of his guilt, who will come and confess it before God, this promise is made to-day, “I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds.”
III. A singular reason. He says, not “Because you were holy,” or “Because you had good desires”; but “Because they called thee an outcast.” Who were they? Why, the mockers and blasphemers: the Lord actually transforms the venom of asps, which was under the tongues of the malicious, into a reason for His mercy. This clearly shows how God hates the very notion of merit; but it also shows that He will find a reason for mercy somewhere.