'O Lord, though our iniquities testify against us, do Thou it for Thy
name's sake: for our backslidings are many; we have sinned against
Thee. 8. O the hope of Israel, the saviour thereof in time of trouble,
why shouldest Thou be as a stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man
that turneth aside to tarry for a night? 9. Why shouldest Thou be as a
man astonied, as a mighty man that cannot save? yet Thou, O Lord, art
in the midst of us, and we are called by Thy name; leave us not.'--JER.
xiv. 7-9.
My purpose now carries me very far away from the immediate occasion of
these words; yet I cannot refrain from a passing reference to the
wonderful pathos and picturesque power with which the long-forgotten
calamity that evoked them is portrayed in the context. A terrible
drought has fallen upon the land, and the prophet's picture of it is,
if one might say so, like some of Dante's in its realism, in its
tenderness, and in its terror. In the presence of a common calamity all
distinctions of class have vanished, and the nobles send their little
ones to the well, and they come back with empty vessels and drooping
heads instead of with the gladness that used to be heard in the place
of drawing of water. The ploughmen are standing among the cracked
furrows, gazing with despair on the brown chapped earth, and in the
field the very dumb creatures are sharing in the common sorrow, and the
imperious law of self-preservation overpowers and crushes the maternal
instincts. 'Yea, the hind also calved in the field, and forsook it,
because there was no grass.' And on every little hilltop where cooler
air might be found, the once untamable wild asses are standing with
open nostrils panting for the breeze, their filmy eyes failing them,
gazing for the rain that will not come. And then, from contemplating
all that sorrow, the prophet turns to God with a wondrous burst of
strangely blended confidence and abasement, penitence and trust, and
fuses together the acknowledgment of sin and reliance upon the
established and perpetual relation between Israel and God, pleading
with Him about His judgments, presenting before Him the mysterious
contradiction that such a calamity should fall on those with whom God
dwelt, and casting himself lowly before the throne, and pleading the
ancient name: 'Do Thou it! Leave us not.'
It is to the wonderful fulness and richness of this prayer that I ask
your attention in these few remarks. Expositors have differed as to
whether the drought that forms its basis was a literal one, or is the
prophet's way of putting the sore calamities that had fallen on Israel.
Be that as it may, I need not remind you how often in Scripture that
metaphor of the 'rain that cometh down from heaven and watereth the
earth' is the symbol for God's divine gift of His Spirit, and how, on
the other hand, the picture of the 'dry and thirsty land where no water
is' is the appropriate figure for the condition of the soul or of the
Church void of the divine presence. And I think I shall not mistake if
I say that though we have much to make us thankful, yet you and I, dear
brethren, and all our Churches and congregations, are suffering under
this drought, and the merciful 'rain, wherewith Thou dost confirm Thine
inheritance when it is weary' has not yet come as we would have it. May
we find in these words some gospel for the day that may help us to come
to the temper of mind into which there shall descend the showers to
'make soft the earth and bless the springing thereof!'
Glancing over these clauses, then, and trying to put them into
something like order for our purpose, there are four things that I
would have you note. The first is the mysterious contradiction between
the ideal Israel and the actual state of things; the second is the
earnest inquiry as to the cause; the third the penitent confession of
our sinfulness; and the last, the triumphant confidence of believing
prayer.
I. First of all, then, look at the illustration given to us by these
words of the mysterious contradiction between the ideal of Israel and
the actual condition of things.
Recur, for the sake of illustration, to the historical event upon which
our text is based. The old prophet had said, 'The Lord thy God giveth
thee a good land, a land full of brooks and water, rivers and depths, a
land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not
lack anything in it'; and the startling fact is, that these men saw
around them a land full of misery for want of that very gift which had
been promised. The ancient charter of Israel's existence was that God
should dwell in the midst of them, and what was it that they beheld?
'As things are,' says the prophet, 'it looks as if that perennial
presence which Thou hast promised had been changed into visits, short
and far between. Why shouldest Thou be as a stranger in the land, and
as a wayfaring man, that turneth aside to tarry for a night?'
Now, I suppose there are two ideas intended to be conveyed--the brief,
transitory, interrupted visits, with long, dreary stretches of absence
between them; and the indifference of the visitant, as a man who
pitches his tent in some little village to-night cares very little
about the people that he never saw before this afternoon's march, and
will never see after to-morrow morning. And not only is it so, but,
instead of the perpetual energy of this divine aid that had been
promised to Israel, as things are now, it looks as if He was a mighty
man astonied, a hero that cannot save--some warrior stricken by panic
fear into a paralysis of all his strength--a Samson with his locks
shorn. The ideal had been so great--perpetual gifts, perpetual
presence, perpetual energy; the reality is chapped ground and parched
places, occasional visitations, like vanishing gleams of sunshine in a
winter's day, and a paralysis, as it would appear, of all the ancient
might.
Dear Christian friends, am I exaggerating, or dealing only with one set
of phenomena, and forgetting the counterpoising ones on the other side,
when I say, Change the name, and the story is told about us? God be
thanked we have much that shows us that He has not left us, but yet,
when we think of what we are, and of what God has promised that we
should be, surely we must confess that there is the most sad, and, but
for one reason, the most mysterious contradiction between the divine
ideal and the actual facts of the case. Need we go further to learn
what God meant His Church to be, than the last words that Jesus Christ
said to us--'Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world'?
Need we go further than those metaphors which come from His lips as
precepts, and, like all His precepts, are a commandment upon the
surface, but a promise in the sweet kernel--'Ye are the salt of the
earth,' 'ye are the light of the world'--or than the prophet's vision
of an Israel which 'shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from
the Lord'? Is that the description of what you and I are? Have not we
to say, 'We have not wrought any deliverance in the earth, neither have
the inhabitants of the world fallen'? 'Salt of the earth,' and we can
hardly keep our own souls from going putrid with the corruption that is
round about us. 'Light of the world,' and our poor candles burnt low
down into the socket, and sending up rather stench and smoke than
anything like a clear flame. The words sound like irony rather than
promises, like the very opposite of what we are rather than the ideals
towards which our lives strive. In our lips they are presumption, and
in the lips of the world, as we only too well know, they are a not
undeserved scoff, to be said with curved lip, 'The salt of the earth,'
and 'the light of the world'!
And look at what we are doing: scarcely holding our own numerically.
Here and there a man comes and declares what God has done for his soul.
But what is the Church, what are the Christian men of England, with all
their multifarious activities, performing? Are we leavening the
national mind? Are we breathing a higher godliness into trade, a more
wholesome, simple style of living into society? And as for expansion,
why, the Church at home does not keep up with the actual increase of
the population; and we are conquering heathendom as we might hope to
drain the ocean by taking out thimblefuls at a time. Is that what the
Lord meant us to do? Our Father with us; yes, but oh! as a 'mighty man,
astonied,' as He might well be, 'that cannot save' for the old, old
reason, 'He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.'
No wonder that on the other side men are saying--and it is not such a
very presumptuous thing to say, if you have regard only to the facts
that appear on the surface--men are saying, 'wait a little while, and
all these organisations will come to nothing; these Christian churches,
as they are called,' and everything that you and I regard as
distinctive of Christianity, 'will be gone and be forgotten.' We
believe ourselves to be in possession of an eternal light; the world
looks at us and sees that it is like a flickering flame in a dying
lamp. Dear brethren, if I think of the lowness of our own religious
characters, the small extent to which we influence the society in which
we live, of the slow rate at which the Gospel progresses in our land, I
can only ask the question, and pray you to lay it to heart, which the
old prophet asked long ago: 'O Thou that art named the house of Jacob,
is the Spirit of the Lord straitened? Are these His doings? Do not my
words do good to them that walk uprightly?' 'Why shouldest Thou be as a
mighty man that cannot save?'
II. Let me ask you to look at the second thought that I think may
fairly be gathered from these words, namely, that this consciousness of
our low and evil condition ought to lead to very earnest and serious
inquiry as to its cause.
The prophet having acknowledged transgression yet asks a question, 'Why
shouldest Thou leave us? Why have all these things come upon us?' And
he asks it not as ignorant of the answer, but in order that the answer
may be deepened in the consciences and perceptions of those that listen
to him, and that they together may take the answer to the Throne of
God. There can be no doubt in a Christian mind as to the reason, and
yet there is an absolute necessity that the familiar truth as to the
reason should be driven home to our own consciences, and made part of
our own spiritual experience, by our own honest reiteration of it and
reflection upon it.
'Why shouldest Thou leave us?' Now, I need not spend time by taking
into consideration answers that other people might give. I suppose that
none of us will say that the reason is in any variableness of that
unalterable, uniform, ever present, ever full, divine gift of God's
Spirit to His children. We do not believe in any arbitrary sovereignty
that withdraws that gift; we do not believe that that gift rises and
falls in its fulness and its abundance. We believe that the great
reservoir is always full, and that, if ever our small tanks be empty,
it is because there is something choking the pipe, not because there is
anything less in the centre storehouse. We believe, if I may take
another illustration, that it is with the seasons and the rotation of
day and night in the religious experience as it is with them in the
natural world. Summer and winter come and go, not because of any
variableness in the centre orb, but because of the variation in the
inclination of the circling satellite; day and night come not by reason
of any 'shadow cast by turning' from the sun that revolves not at
all--but by reason of the side that is turned to his life-giving and
quickening beams. We believe that all the clouds and mist that come
between us and God are like the clouds and mist of the sky, not dropped
upon us from the blue empyrean above, but sucked up from the undrained
swamps and poisonous fens of the lower earth. That is to say, if there
be any change in the fulness of our possession of the divine Spirit,
the fault lies wholly within the region of the mutable and of the
human, and not at all in the region of the perennial and divine.
Nor do we believe, I suppose, any of us, that we are to look for any
part of the reason in failure of the adaptation of God's work and God's
ordinances to the great work which they have to do. Other people may
tell us, if they like--it will not shake our confidence--that the fire
that was kindled at Pentecost has all died down to grey ashes, and that
it is of no use trying to cower over the burnt-out embers any more in
order to get heat out of them. They may, and do, tell us that the
'rushing, mighty wind that filled the house' obeys the law of cycles as
the wind of the natural universe, and will calm into stillness after a
while, and then set in and blow from the opposite quarter. They may
tell us, and they do tell us, that the 'river of the water of life that
flows from the Throne of God and of the Lamb' is lost in the sands of
time, like the streams in the great Mongolian plateau. We do not
believe that. Everything stands exactly as it always has been in regard
to the perennial possession of Christ's Spirit as the strength and
resource of His Church; and the fault, dear friends, lies only here: 'O
Lord, our iniquities testify against us; our backslidings are many; we
have sinned against Thee.'
Oh, let me urge upon you, and upon myself, that the first thing which
we have to do is prayerfully and patiently and honestly to search after
this cause, and not look to superficial trifles such as possible
variations and improvements in order and machinery, and polity or
creed, or anything else, as the means of changing and bettering the
condition of things, but to recognise this as being the one sole cause
that hinders--the slackness of our own hold on Christ's hand, and the
feebleness and imperfection of our own spiritual life. Dear brethren,
there is no worse sign of the condition of churches than the calm
indifference and complacency in the present condition of things which
visits very many of us; it is like a deadly malaria wherever it is to
be found, and there is no more certain precursor of a blessed change
than a widespread dissatisfaction with what we are, and an honest,
earnest search after the cause. The sleeper that is restless, and
tosses and turns, is near awakening; and the ice that cracks, and
crumbles, and groans, and heaves, is on the point of breaking up. When
Christian men and women are aroused to this, the startled recognition
of how far beneath the ideal--no, I should not say how far beneath, but
rather how absolutely opposed to, the ideal--so much of our Christian
life and work is, and when further they push the inquiry for the cause,
so as to find that it lies in their own sin, then we shall be near the
time, yea, the 'set time, to favour Zion.'
III. And so let me point you, in the next place--and but a word or two
on that matter--to the consideration that the consciousness of the evil
condition and knowledge of its cause leads on to lowly penitence and
confession.
I dwell upon that for a moment for one reason mainly. I suppose that it
is a very familiar observation with us all that when, by God's mercy,
any of us individually, or as communities, are awakened to a sense of
our own departure from what He would have us be, and the feebleness of
all our Christian work, we are very apt to be led away upon the wrong
scent altogether, and instead of seeking improvement and revivification
in God's order, we set up an order of our own, which is a great deal
more pleasing to our own natural inclinations. For instance, to bring
the thing to a practical illustration, suppose I were, after these
remarks of mine, as a kind of corollary from them, to ask for
volunteers for some new form of Christian work, I believe I should get
twenty for one that I should get if I simply said, 'Brethren, let us go
together and confess our sins before God, and ask Him not to leave us.'
We are always tempted to originate some new kind of work, to
manufacture a revival, to begin by bringing together the outcasts into
the fold, instead of to begin by trying to deepen our own Christian
character, and purifying our own hearts, and getting more and more of
the life of God into our own spirits, and then to let the increase from
without come as it may. The true law for us to follow is to begin with
lowly abasement at His footstool, and when we have purged ourselves
from faults and sins in the very act of confessing them, and of shaking
them from us, then when we are fit for growth, external growth, we
shall get it. But the revival of the Church is not what people fancy it
to be so often nowadays, the gathering in of the unconverted into its
fold--that is the consequence of the revival. The revival comes by the
path of recognition of sin, and confession of sin, and forsaking of
sin, and waiting before Him for His blessing and His Spirit. Let me put
all that I would say about this matter into the one remark, that the
law of the whole process is the old one which was exemplified on the
day of Pentecost. 'Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly; gather the
people, assemble the elders; let the bridegroom go forth of his
chamber, and the bride out of her closet; let the priests, the
ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar. Yea, the
Lord will be zealous for His land, and will pity His people; and I will
pour out My Spirit upon all flesh.' Brethren, to our knees and to
confessions! Let us see to it that we are right in our own inmost
hearts.
IV. And so, finally, look at the wonderful way in which in this text of
ours the prophet fuses together into one indistinguishable and yet not
confused whole, confession, and pleading remonstrance and also the
confidence of triumphant prayer.
I cannot touch upon the various points of that as I would gladly do;
but I must suggest one or two of them for your consideration. Look at
the substance of his petition: 'Do Thou it for Thy name's sake.' 'Leave
us not.' That is all he asks. He does not prescribe what is to be done.
He does not ask for the taking away of the calamity, he simply asks for
the continual presence and the operation of the divine hand, sure that
God is in the midst of them, and working all things right. Let us shape
our expectations in like fashion, not being careful to discover paths
for Him to run in; but contented if we can realise the sweetness and
the strength of His calming and purging presence, and willing to leave
the manner of His working in His own hand.
Then, look at what the text suggests as pleas with God, and grounds of
confidence for ourselves. 'Do Thou it for Thy name's sake, the hope of
Israel, the Saviour thereof in time of trouble. Thou art in the midst
of us, we are called by Thy name.' There are three grounds upon which
we may base our firm confidence. The one is the name--all the ancient
manifestations of Thy character, which have been from of old, and
remain for our perpetual strength. 'As we have heard, so have we seen
in the city of the Lord of Hosts.' 'That which is Thy memorial unto all
generations pledges Thee to the constant reiteration and reproduction,
hour by hour, according to our necessity, of all the might, and the
miracles, and the mercies of the past. Do Thou it for Thy name's sake.'
And then Jeremiah turns to the throne of God with another plea--'the
hope of Israel'--and thereby fills his mouth with the argument drawn
from the fact that the confidence of the Church is fixed upon Him, and
that it cannot be that He will disappoint it. 'Because Thou hast given
us Thy name, and because Thy name, by Thy grace, has become, through
our faith, our hope, Thou art doubly bound--bound by what Thou art,
bound by what we expect--to be with us, our strength and our
confidence.'
And the final plea is the appeal to the perennial and essential
relationship of God to His Church. 'We are called by Thy name'--'we
belong to Thee. It were Thy concern and ours that Thy Gospel should
spread in the world, and the honour of our Lord should be advanced.
Thou hast not surely lost Thy hold of Thine own, or Thy care for Thine
own property.' The psalmist said, 'Thou wilt not suffer him that is
devoted to Thee to see corruption.' And what his faith felt to be
impossible in regard to the bodily life is still more unthinkable in
regard to the spiritual. It cannot be that that which belongs to Him
should pass and perish. 'We are called by Thy name, and Thou, Lord, art
in the midst of us'--not a Samson shorn of his locks; not a wayfaring
man turning aside to delay for a night; but the abiding Presence which
makes the Church glad.
Dear brethren, calm and confident expectation should be our attitude,
and lowly repentance should rise to triumphant believing hope, because
God is moving round about us in this day. Thanks be to His name, there
is spread through us all an expectation of great things. That
expectation brings its own fulfilment, and is always God's way of
preparing the path for His own large gifts, like the strange,
indefinable attitude of expectation which we know filled the civilised
world before the birth of Jesus Christ--like the breath of the morning
that springs up before the sun rises, and says, 'The dawn; the dawn,'
and dies away. The expectation is the precursor of the gift, and the
prayer is the guarantee of the acceptance. Take an illustration. Those
great lakes in Central Africa that are said to feed the Nile are filled
with melting snows weeks and weeks before the water rises away down in
Egypt, and brings fertility across the desert that it makes to glisten
with greenness, and to rejoice and blossom as the rose. And so in
silence, high up upon the mountains of God, fed by communion with
Himself, the expectation rises to a flood-tide ere it flows down
through all the channels of Christian organisation and activity, and
blesses the valleys below. It is not for us to hurry the work of God,
nor spasmodically to manufacture revivals. It is not for us, under the
pretence of waiting for Him, to be cold and callous; but it is for us
to question ourselves wherefore these things have come upon us, with
lowly, penitent confession to turn to God, and ask Him to bless us. Oh,
if we were to do this, we should not ask in vain! Let us take the
prayer of our context, and say, 'We acknowledge, O Lord, our
wickedness, and the iniquity of our fathers; for we have sinned against
Thee. Are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause
rain? or can the heavens give showers? art not Thou He, O Lord, our
God? Therefore we will wait upon Thee.' Be sure that the old merciful
answer will come to us, 'I will pour rivers of water upon him that is
thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground; and I will pour My Spirit upon
thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring.'