God’s People Melted and Tried

God's People Melted and Tried

(No. 2274)

INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1892.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
FEBRUARY 19, 1891.

"Therefore thus says the LORD of Hosts, Behold, I will melt them, and
try them; for how shall I deal with the daughter of My people?"
Jeremiah 9:7.

OBSERVE, here, that God represents Himself as greatly concerned to know
what to do with His people. Of course, He speaks after the manner of
men, for, as the infinitely wise God, knowing all things from the
beginning, Jehovah knew what He would do. But yet, in order that we may
understand something of the workings of the Divine mind, He represents
Himself as brought to a non-plus and saying, in the words of our text,
"How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?" There are some men
and women in the world who seem to greatly perplex those who love them
and who desire their welfare. They are a great perplexity to those with
whom they live and who labor for their good–and it seems as if God,
Himself, regarded it as a matter of perplexity when He said, "How shall
I deal with the daughter of My people?"

But notice, next, the Lord is so resolved to save His people that He
will use the sternest possible means rather than lose any of those whom
He loves. He says here, "I will melt them, and try them; I will cast
them into the furnace, and put them into the melting pot. I will make
the fire so hot that their iron hearts shall melt and, though they are
like Hell-hardened steel, devoid of feeling, I will make it so hot for
them that they shall be melted. As men assay metal, pouring out the
molten mass in a red-hot or white state, I will melt them and try
them."

Sinners, that God may save you, He will do the roughest things with
you! He will not spare you any kind of sorrow here, or any sort of
loss, or any measure of despair of spirit, so that He may bring you to
Himself. He asks the question as though He were very anxious to avoid
using His rough ways, "How shall I deal with the daughter of My
people?" But He answers the question with all the severity of almighty
love, "Behold, I will melt them, and try them. There is nothing else to
be done with them, so I will do that by which alone they can be saved."

Observe, once more, in our preface, that God's concern about His
people, and His resolve to use strange ways with them, springs out of
His relationship to them, for He says, "How shall I deal with the
daughter of My people?" "My people." They were His, though they were
very far away from Him through their evil ways. Though they had gone
from evil to evil, though their lives provoked Him to the highest
degree, yet He did not disown them! He remembered the Covenant that He
made for them with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with Jacob–and because
of that Covenant, He thought upon them for good and resolved to somehow
save them. When God has chosen a man from before the foundation of the
world, and when He has given that man over to Christ to be a part of
the reward of His soul's travail, He will adopt strange means to
accomplish His sacred purpose. And He will carry out that purpose, let
it cost him what it may!

We are going to apply these principles in three ways. First, to the
matter of conversion. Secondly, to the matter of Christian life and
thirdly, to the Church of God in its corporate capacity.

I. First, these principles may be applied to THE MATTER OF CONVERSION.
There is a very simple way of being saved. It should be. I hope it is
the common way. It is the simple way of following the call of Grace.
This should be your way. I hope it is. The Gospel is preached, you
believe it. Christ is set before you, you accept Him, you trust Him,
you are saved. Without any violence, your heart is opened, as with the
picklock of Grace. God puts the key into the door and steps into your
heart without a word. "Whose heart the Lord opened," we read of Lydia.
Even if you have known nothing of the terror of the Lord, if you have
had no strange convulsion of feeling, no earthquake, tempest and
thunder– God is in the still small voice–and you are saved by His
Grace as much as those who have had a deeper experience.

This is the way of salvation, but there are some who will not come this
way. There is the Wicket Gate. They have but to knock and it will be
opened, but they prefer to go round about through the Slough of
Despond, or to get under the care of Mr. Worldly Wiseman who leads them
round by the house of Mr. Legality, who dwells in the village of
Morality. And there they go with their burdens on their backs, which
they need not carry even for a single hour, for they would roll off
directly if they would but look to Jesus and believe in Him. But they
will not do this. There are some of whom God has to say, "How shall I
deal with the daughter of My people?" Why is this?

Well, some of them have a crooked sort of mind. They never can believe
anything straight–they must go round about. I know a friend whose
conversation is always of this kind. If he were in King William Street
and I were in the Borough, he could not come across London Bridge to
me–he would find it necessary to go at least as far as Hamrnersmith
before he crossed the river–and then he would come round to me. That
is how he always talks. I sometimes get a little tired of that style
and I wish he would come to the point at once. There are some minds of
that sort. You say to some people, "Believe and live." Then they begin
scratching their heads a bit and saying, "What is it to believe, and
what is it to live? And how can a man live by believing, and does he
believe first, or does he live first? And if he lives before he
believes, then how does believing make him live?"

I could puzzle away like that all night if I liked–any fool can put
stools in the way for people to tumble over. There are some minds that
seem to be made with what I may call a circumbendibus that cannot take
the Truth of God as God puts it, believing Him as a child believes his
father. They must somehow twist it about, wrest it, distort it, contort
it. Oh, that the Lord would give them another mind! "Except you are
converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the
Kingdom of Heaven." O you wise people, you deep and subtle people, you
very thoughtful folk who cannot think that God means what He says when
He says that a sinner has only to look to Christ and live–but imagine
that there must be some particular kind of spectacles to be worn
through which you are to look, or that you are to get to some point of
the compass from which to look, or that you are to do something else
beside look–oh, that you would lay aside all this, for you are making
the work of your salvation needlessly difficult! It is of such as you
that God says, "How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?"

But some others are obstinate in sin. They are not happy in it, but
they will not give it up. They have had some very serious talks with
their conscience and they know that they are wrong, yet they persist in
continuing to be wrong. They mean to be right, some day, but not yet.
They wish, somehow, that they had overcome the difficulty, but they
cannot face it–they cannot give up their evil habits. They still cling
to them and, though often persuaded, threatened and moved, they still
stand where they always stood–obstinately continuing in sin–while God
repeats the enquiry, "How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?"

Some others are unwilling to confess sin at all. They think themselves
wrong, but they try to make excuses. They are wrong, but not so very
wrong. They are such poor, frail creatures, and so greatly tempted, it
cannot be very wrong for them to sin. The mind is so easily led
astray–surely that is the fault of heredity, or the fault of
environment, or the fault of–well, they really make it out that it is
the fault of God! So they say in their thoughts, if they do not dare to
put it into words. But as for confessing that they are sinners, they
will not come to that! I expect, before they will cry, "Father, I have
sinned," they will have to be melted. Before they will ever come to
confess their iniquity, they will have to pass through the melting pot.

Then there are some people who are not saved, but who are outwardly
very religious. They have never omitted going to Church, or, perhaps,
to the Meeting House, whichever they think the better of the two, and
they have been brought up carefully–they have said their prayers
regularly–and they have had family prayer, too. They have a Bible.
They do not read it much, but still they have one. They are very nice
people. Everybody thinks that they are Christians, yet all this
religion of theirs is not worth a single farthing, for there is no
heart-work in it, no repentance of sin, no love to God, no faith in
Christ. The robe of their self-righteousness clings to them and
prevents their coming to rest in Jesus. Sinful self is bad enough to
get rid of, but righteous self is even worse! Self-righteousness is a
kind of mud that will not be brushed off. The man who is spattered with
it does not let it get dry–he renews it every day. The self-righteous
man thinks he is too good to go to Heaven by the way a sinner goes–and
so he never goes at all.

Some, who have no forms of religion, are, nevertheless, wonderfully
self-righteous. They are not Christians, but in their own opinion they
are quite as good as Christians. In fact, they think they are a great
deal better! Yet their con-

science must tell them that this is a lie. Still, they flatter
themselves in their own conceit and hide away in a refuge of lies till
God, Himself, says, "How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?"
And we cannot answer the question unless it is in the words of the
text, where the Lord says, "Therefore I will melt them, and try them."
They will have to go into the fire and be melted down before they will
be meet for the Master's use.

There are some others who will not come to Christ because they are so
full of levity and fickleness. They are all froth, all fun. They live
like butterflies–they suck in the juices from the flowers–and flit
from one to the other. They are easily impressed, one way and another,
but there is no heart in them. "Ephraim is a silly dove without heart."
They have no stability, they are fickle. They are like the morning
cloud that is soon blown away–as the early dew that melts in the beams
of the rising sun–so is their goodness soon departed from them. How
are they to be saved? Some of you have been awakened 50 times, already,
and if you had been at some places of worship, you would say that you
had been converted a dozen times! But I hope we will never flatter you
into that delusion. I have heard some people say that they have been
converted ever so many times. How can a person be born again more than
once? I have heard of being born again, and I know that it is
possible–but to be born again, and again, and again, must be
impossible–that cannot be! Yet people of this sort are good, bad, or
indifferent, just as the fit takes them, for they are fickle,
changeable–one does not know where to find them.

And in addition, there is another class of persons that are insincere.
There is no depth of earth about them. They do not really feel what
they think they feel. And when they say that they believe, they do not
really believe in their heart. They promise, too, when they are ill,
what saints they will be if the Lord will but raise them up–but when
they get well, again, they are not saints. How many have promised and
vowed that if they but escaped in such an accident, or their lives were
spared in such a disease, they would seek the Lord–yet they have done
nothing of the kind! So again, tonight, the question has to be asked
about them by God, "How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?"

Now, having brought before you these characters, or held up the mirror
of God's Word so that you might see yourselves in it, I want you to
notice how God very often deals with such people. According to my text
they will have to feel the furnace.

I have noticed, during a considerable period of time, some of the
self-righteous and the outwardly-religious put into the fire and melted
by being permitted to fall into some gross and open sin. I knew a young
man, an excellent and worthy young fellow he was to all appearance. But
he was entirely wrapped up in his own righteousness–and there was no
getting at him. Under the stress of a sudden temptation in the
workshop, he distinctly told a lie. It was a very sorrowful business.
Nobody but he knew that he had done so. It was never found out, but he
knew that he had told a distinct and willful lie–and he felt so
ashamed of himself that all his pretty buildings of self-righteousness
vanished away in a moment! And instead of being great and grand, as he
had been, he had to come to Christ with the publican's prayer, "God be
merciful to me a sinner."

He had such a sense of right and wrong that he condemned himself
outright. He came to me in an awful state of mind. There were thousands
of men who would have done what he had done and never thought the worse
of themselves for it–but he had a conscience and a truthful
spirit–and he felt mean as dirt for having told his master a
falsehood. God blessed that experience to him! He was melted right down
and, in the bitterness of his spirit, he cried, for weeks, for mercy
and, by God's Grace, he was to find it at the Savior's feet. I pray God
that none of you self-righteous people may be left to go into an open
sin, but it may be that the Lord may leave you to yourselves–to let
you see what you really are–for you probably have no idea what you
are. I, as the servant of God, might flood my face with tears and weep
over you if I could prophesy what you will yet do if restraint is taken
from you–for in your heart there are the eggs of all manner of
sins–and it only needs favorable circumstances for these to be hatched
out into a very cage of unclean birds. That is one way in which I have
seen men melted.

Some, again, have been melted down by temporal calamities. I have seen
a very great man, with his diamond ring flashing on his finger–I was
almost going to say, "and with bells on his toes"–for he would almost
have liked to wear them there if he could, to call attention to his
superior position and his eminent rank. He was a gentleman. He felt
that he was and, as to preaching to him as a poor sinner, he was
offended at the idea! He had good health and strength, too, and he was
not going to die. He counted it one of the wisest things to "drive dull
care away." He was merry-hearted, full

of spirits, and the Gospel had no power over him. "Take it to the
dying," he said, "take it to the poor people down in the slums. It is
the right thing for them, but I–I do not need it."

Yes, but when his fortune melted, he began to melt a little. And when
his health went and he found himself on a sick-bed–and those who once
did him reverence, forgot him, and he was almost without a friend–then
he wanted to come round to God by the back door, somehow, and cry, "God
be merciful to me a sinner!" Oh, yes, there are some who cannot be
saved as long as they have a silver spoon in their mouths! But when
they are brought to poverty, it is the nearest way round to the
Father's House, round by the far country where they would gladly fill
their bellies with the husks that the swine eat!

Some years ago a young gentleman, whose father was a godly man, told me
that he was keeping racehorses, and betting. I said to him, "That is
right, bet all your money away, and when you have nothing left, you
will come to your father's God. Maybe that is the way home for you–an
empty pocket, a ragged coat, and a sick body. Then, perhaps, you will
turn to God." The Lord has often done so with men. Am I speaking to any
who are passing through such a trial as that? God grant that your
poverty shall lead you to the best riches! And your sickness conduct
you to eternal health!

At other times, without any overt sin, without any temporal trouble,
God has ways of taking men apart from their fellows and whipping them
behind the door. It has been my lot to meet with, not merely hundreds,
but I think I may say, thousands of souls in this condition. Wherever I
go, I feel an intense happiness in meeting with miserable,
brokenhearted souls, because I believe they are on the way to the
possession of a new heart and a right spirit! God is dealing with them
in a way of love, though His way seems to them to be very rough. I have
tried to cheer them. I have prayed with and for them. They have told me
that their sin haunts them day and night–they cannot hope for mercy
and cannot think that God will ever blot out their transgressions.
Their Bible seems to thunder at them as they read it. Their heart is
heavy, their friends think them melancholy–talk about putting them in
an asylum–and I do not know what, besides! They are ground down and
brought low. This is all meant to work for their good–they would not
come to God any other way. It is by such an experience that God is
fulfilling His Word, "I will melt them, and try them."

In all this God has one great objective. It is just this, first, to
hide pride from men. God will not save us and have us proud. He will
not let any one of us throw up his cap and glorify himself for his own
salvation. Grace must have the glory of it from first to last! Beside
that, God means to take us out of our sin, and to do that, He makes it
to be a bitter and an evil thing to us. All that He is doing is to make
our sin too heavy for us to carry, to make us sick of sin, fond of
Christ and earnest after holiness. Blessed is the blow that almost
crushes you if it breaks off the connection between you and sin!

The drift of all this experience is to bring us to Christ, to the Great
Sacrifice–and none will ever come to Christ but those who have nowhere
else to go. No man ever puts into this port except under stress of foul
weather. Souls try to go anywhere except to Christ–but when they
cannot go anywhere else, when they are done for, when they are ruined
and lost–then it is that they fly to Him and take Him to be their All
in All! Therefore it takes a long time to get even a child of God to
fully understand the way of salvation by sacrifice.

I went to see my venerable friend, George Rogers, yesterday. He is
close upon 92 and cannot leave his bed. He has to lie there and can do
nothing for himself–but his mental faculties are as bright as ever. I
was not long with him before he said to me, "They do not seem to savor,
now, the Sacrifice of Christ and," he added, "you know that Peter
believed in the Deity of our Lord and he made such a delightful
confession of the Deity of Christ that the Master said, 'Blessed are
you, Simon Bar-Jona: for flesh and blood has not revealed it unto you,
but My Father which is in Heaven.' But," said Mr. Rogers, "although
Peter knew the Deity of Christ, and knew it well, he did not know
Christ's Sacrifice, for no sooner did his Master begin to tell him that
He was to be crucified, and so on, than, 'Peter took Him, and began to
rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from You, Lord; this shall not be unto
You.' He could not believe it. He could not see the Sacrifice and his
Lord had to call him, 'adversary,' and to say to him, 'Get you behind
Me: you are an offense unto Me: for you savor not the things that are
of God, but those that are of men.'"

My dear old friend said, "Until we can see the Sacrifice of Christ, we
have not seen things as they really are in God's sight. And any Gospel,
even if it appears to glorify Christ and has His Deity in it, savors of
the things of men and not of the things of God if it leaves out
Christ's Sacrifice." Mr. Rogers was right! There must be the Sacrifice
of Christ–it is that savor which we are to make known in every place.
That is a sweet savor unto God which we are never to cease to give
forth as long as we can speak. But, oh, it takes such a time with some
to bring them to smell that blessed savor of the Sac-

rifice of the Son of God! When they do perceive it, they get peace, and
light, and love, and liberty! But, until then, God Himself seems to say
concerning them, "How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?"

I have dwelt so long upon the matter of conversion that my time is
largely gone. I beg you who can pray to join me in asking God to bless
the word I have spoken.

II. But, in the second place, I want to say something to Christians,
for, IN THE MATTER OF CHRISTIAN LIFE, God seems to say, " What shall I
do for the daughter of my people? I will melt them, and try them."

Some Christians go from joy to joy. Their path, like that of the light,
shines more and more unto the perfect day. Why should you and I not be
like that? Why should we not simply believe and keep on believing, and
go on rejoicing, serving God with all our heart, and resting in the
precious blood of Jesus?

There are other Christians who appear to make much progress in Divine
things, but it is not true progress. Some appear to have a great deal
of knowledge. They talk as if they knew everything, but when you come
to examine them closely, you find that they do not know hardly anything
that they ought to know. Some, too, get a very wonderful experience.
You see them swagger about. You hear them brag of it until you are
disgusted with them. That experience which a man boasts of is an
experience he ought to be ashamed of! Some, too, seem to have great
ability. To hear them talk of what they can do, you would imagine that
they could drive the Church before them and drag the world behind them,
and I do not know what besides! Paul said, "When I am weak, then am I
strong," but these people are so strong that they never know what
weakness means!

As for the progress that some professors make in sanctification, why,
just look at some of them, and listen to their tall talk! They have not
sinned for years! The very principle of sin seems to have died out of
them! Poor deluded souls! This is what they say, mark you, not what I
believe. As for their graces, they have all things and abound. They are
as patient as martyrs. They believe as strongly as John Knox or Martin
Luther. You ordinary Christians cannot attain to their stature. If they
were to stand bolt upright, they would strike the stars from their
places, they are so great and tall! And yet–and yet, there is nothing
in their boasting, after all. I do not say that they know that much of
their wonderful religion is false. No, but they have wrong ideas,
confused notions, addled brains, and so they do not know their own real
state. Whereas they say that they are rich, increased in goods and have
need of nothing, they are all the while naked, blind, poor and
miserable!

The worst thing about their condition is that some of them do not want
to know their real state. They half suspect that it is not what they
say it is, but they do not like to be told so. In fact, they get very
cross when anyone even hints at the truth. No one's temper is so
imperfect as the perfect man! He soon shows his imperfection. He is the
Brother who must not be touched. You must stand a long way off and look
at him with reverence, or else he is soon sorely grieved at you. Some
do not want to know their real condition. They have an idea that,
perhaps, they are not what they seem to be, but they would not have
their dream roughly broken. Instruction is not desired by them. Why are
they to be instructed? They know a great deal more than anybody else
can teach them and they like the man who will speak flatteringly to
them– and who will make them believe that what they say is all Gospel!
Now, there are such people in all our congregations, of whom God might
well say, "How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?"

This is what He will do with a great many who are now inflated with a
false kind of Grace–"I will melt them, and try them," says the Lord of
Hosts. He will put them to a test. Here is a man who has a quantity of
plate and he does not know the value of it, so he takes it to a
goldsmith and asks him what it is worth. "Well," he says, "I cannot
exactly tell you, but if you give me a little time, I will melt it all
down and then I will let you know its value." Thus does the Lord deal
with many of His people. They have become very good and very great, as
they fancy, and He says, "I will melt them."

This is a natural test for silver and gold, the very best kind of test
for precious metal! But in the process of melting, if it is with you,
my Brothers and Sisters, as it is with me, the bulk is very much
reduced. When God begins to melt us by letting fierce corruptions burn
within us, or by allowing our spirits to be depressed and our minds to
be darkened, oh, what a shrinkage there seems to be almost immediately
in that melting pot! What fear takes hold upon us, then, lest we should
shrink to nothing and disappear altogether!

Then, also, the fashion of the precious metal is marred–its beauty
soon departs. That silver vase was beautifully fashioned, but when it
is melted, nothing of the design remains. All that is of human
fashioning is lost in the melting pot. Were you ever in the melting
pot, dear Friends? I have been there and my sermons with me, and my
frames and feelings

and all my good works. They seemed to quite fill the pot till the fire
burned up–and then I looked to see what there was unconsumed–and if
it had not been that I had a simple faith in my Lord Jesus Christ, I am
afraid I should not have found anything left! This is what God will do
with all His people unless they walk very humbly with Him. "He that is
down needs fear no fall." He that is pure gold will lose nothing in the
melting. But he that is somebody in his own opinion will have to come
down a peg or two before long. It is well that it is so, for if it were
not, we should soon grow proud, worldly and careless–and even
licentious–for it is strange, but it is true, that the next thing to a
boast of perfect holiness has almost always, throughout history, been
intense licentiousness! How it comes to be so, perhaps they who study
metaphysics can tell, but so it has constantly been in the history of
mankind. When you fancy that you are out of gunshot, there is an enemy
close at hand. When you dream that the road is safe, there is a pitfall
just before you. When you say, "I am perfectly holy," the very pride
that makes you say so is an indication of a deadly cancer of
self-righteousness that is eating into your very soul!

Now, Beloved, the result of melting is truth and humility. The result
of melting is that we arrive at a true valuation of things. The result
of melting is that we are poured out into a new and better fashion.
And, oh, we may almost wish for the melting pot if we may but get rid
of the dross, if we may but be pure, if we may but be fashioned more
completely like unto our Lord!

If any of you who have been converted are undergoing a melting just
now, do not be staggered by it. It is no strange thing that has
happened to you and it is no evil thing. You have, no doubt, needed it.
You were growing too gross, too careless–and it was necessary for you
that you should be melted. Now God has given you the highest proof of
His love in this melting, this scourging, this suffering, this breaking
down, this annihilating of carnal confidence, this hanging up of Mr.
Presumption by the neck that he may die–that self may fall–and that
Jesus may be All in All. God grant that it may be so!

III. I was going to speak about this principle in THE MATTER OF THE
CHURCH OF GOD IN ITS CORPORATE CAPACITY, but I will speak of that at
another time if the Lord permits. This you may take for granted, that,
if God has chosen us, but we are not willing to go in His way and
humbly trust in Jesus, and have Him to be our All in All, the Lord will
not give us up, but He will melt us, and try us till we are fit to run
in any mold that He likes to use.

God bless you, and save you, and comfort you, for Jesus Christ's sake!
Amen.

EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON JEREMIAH9.

Verse 1. Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears,
that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my
people! Jeremiah foresaw that the Chaldeans would come up and so many
would be slain that the nation would be almost destroyed.

2. Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men;
that I might leave my people, and go from them! For they are all
adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men. He mourned because of the
doom that awaited them, but he equally mourned because of the sin that
would bring that doom upon them. He wished that he could get away into
one of those refuges which were provided in lonely places, where
travelers might lodge for a night.

3. And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies. They made use
of the tongue, as if it were a bow, to shoot out lies. It is a very
graphic description of the men of Jeremiah's day. He dips his pen in
his heart's blood as he writes about them.

3. But they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth. Oh, no! No
one stood up for the Truth of God in those days. No man was willing to
suffer for it, to argue for it, or even to acknowledge it.

3. For they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not Me, says the
LORD. They grew worse and worse. It is the way of wicked men to ripen
into greater sin. They proceeded from evil to evil–and Jeremiah had
Jehovah's testimony for it that, though they knew a great many things,
they did not know the LORD–"They know not Me, says the LORD."

4. Take you heed, everyone, of his neighbor, and trust you not in any
brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbor
will walk with slander. It was an evil time, indeed, when, even in the
domestic circle, there could be no

brotherly confidence. "Every brother will utterly supplant." Jacob's
name, you remember, was, "supplanter," and all these men were Jacobs,
each one ready to supplant his brother, to throw him on one side that
he might occupy his place. As to neighborly conduct, there was
none–the neighbors were all gossips and slanderers of one another.

5. And they will deceive, everyone, his neighbor, and will not speak
the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary
themselves to commit iniquity. What a sad state they were in! Their
tongues spoke lies without any teaching and they schooled them till
they were masters of the art of lying. They each had a D.D.–Doctor of
Dissembling–they understood the art thoroughly! They had taught their
tongue to speak lies and they had committed so much evil that they even
tired themselves in the doing of it!

6. Their habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they
refuse to know Me, says the LORD. Putting forth all their critical
ingenuity to get rid of God, His Word, Inspiration and the Divine
Sacrifice, doing all they could that they might not know God!

7. 8. Therefore thus says the LORD of Hosts, Behold, I will melt them,
and try them; for how shall I deal with the daughter of My people?
Their tongue is as an arrow shot out; it speaks deceit: one speaks
peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth, but in heart he lies in wait.
Do you wonder that Jeremiah wept? With so true a spirit, so tender and
sympathetic, he could not bear it when man had become man's worst enemy
and no man could be relied upon–for all practiced and spoke deceit.

9. Shall I not visit them for these things? says the LORD: shall not My
soul be avenged on such a nation as this? Divine Justice sets the fire
of indignation burning. Nothing excites God's wrath more than continued
lies and deceit, unkind-ness, unbrotherly conduct and unholiness of
life. Put all these evils together and you have more than enough
God-provoking sins calling for an avenging visitation!

10. For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the
habitations of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned
up, so that none can pass through them; neither can men hear the voice
of the cattle; both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled;
they are gone. The Prophet pictures what the Chaldeans would do. They
would not only destroy the cities, but they would even rob the hills of
their cattle and sweep the fields till there would be nothing left that
men could gather.

11. And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons; and I will
make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant. Jeremiah had
to live to see all this. The thought of it pulled up the sluices of his
tears and made him wish that all the clouds and seas and rains would
come and dwell in his eyes, for his grief had need of all the watery
things that Nature could produce. George Herbert sings, and I quote his
lines to illustrate the depth of Jeremiah's grief–

"Letevery vein

Suck up a river to supply my eyes, My weary, weeping eyes, too dry for
me, Unless they get new conduits, new supplies, To bear them out, and
with my state agree."

12. Who is the wise man that may understand this? And who is he to whom
the mouth of the LORD has spoken, that he may declare it, for why does
the land perish and is burned up like a wilderness, that none passes
through? The land would never have been desolate if it had not been for
the wickedness of the people. Sin–sin it is that does the mischief!
There are some who cavil at the punishment that God puts upon sin–they
would do better if they found fault with the sin which brings its own
punishment with it. There is nothing arbitrary in God's justice–He
allows sin, itself, to ripen, and when it is finished, it brings forth
eternal death.

13. 14. And the LORD says, Because they have forsaken My Law which I
set before them, and have not obeyed My voice, neither walked therein;
but have walked after the imagination of their own heart, and after
Baalim. After many Baals, is the meaning–many are the gods that men
make for themselves when they turn away from Jehovah.

14. 15. Which their fathers taught them: therefore thus says the LORD
of Hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this
people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink. You cannot
sin without suffering. If you will not drink of the waters of
obedience, but will drink of the waters of rebellion, they shall be
bitter.

16. I will scatter them, also, among the heathen, whom neither they nor
their fathers have known: and I will send a sword after them, till I
have consumed them. A patriot for man, a Prophet for God, do you marvel
that he wept?

17. Thus says the LORD of Hosts, Consider you, and call for the
mourning women, that they may come; and send for cunning women, that
they may come. These were the hired mourners, the women who were paid
to go to funerals and simulate grief. "Send for your weepers now," said
the LORD of Hosts, "for if you ever needed mourners, you need them
now."

18. 19. And let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our
eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters. For
a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion. These were no mock
mourners–but real weepers who had cause to mourn.

19. How are we plundered! We are greatly confounded. Why did they not
say, "How we have sinned"? No, men will think of the punishment they
suffer–but they will overlook the sin they commit!

19. Because we have forsaken the land, because our dwellings have cast
us out. Why did not they say, "Because we have forsaken the LORD,
because we have cast off the worship of Jehovah"? You cannot bring men
to that point. They quarrel with the rod rather than with the hand that
holds it. They mourn over the result of sin–but to the sin, itself,
they still cling.

20. 21. Yet hear the word of the LORD, O you women, and let your ears
receive the word of His mouth, and teach your daughters wailing, and
everyone, her neighbor, lamentation. For death is come up into our
windows. It did not wait to come in by the door. In time of war or
pestilence, death comes how it will through every casement, closed or
open.

21. And is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from
without, and the young men from the streets. Generally, in war, they
spare the children, and they carry the young men away as captives. The
Chaldeans were cruel–they killed the little ones–and they slew the
young men.

22. Speak, Thus says the LORD, Even the carcasses of men shall fall as
dung upon the open field, and as the handful after the harvestman, and
none shall gather them. So dreadful was the devastation that was worked
by these Chaldeans on account of the people's sin, that dead bodies lay
like heaps of dung that the farmer strews upon the field!

23. 24. Thus says the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man
glory in his riches: but let him that glories glory in this, that he
understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD which exercises loving
kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth: for in these things
I delight, says the LORD. This was the God who turned, again, to His
rebellious people and who would have been glad if they had but known
Him. He would have made them richer than the rich, and wiser than the
wise, and mightier than the mighty–but they would not have the things
in which Jehovah delighted.

25. Behold, the days come, says the LORD, that I will punish all them
which are circumcised with the uncircumcised. If they sin like others,
they shall die like others, circumcised or uncircumcised, baptized or
unbaptized.

26. Egypt, and Judah, and Edom. You see that Judah is sandwiched in
between Egypt and Edom. Those who were the people of God are put in the
same category with the accursed nation because they had forsaken Him
and mixed up with them.

26. And the children of Ammon, and Moab, and all that are in the utmost
corners that dwell in the wilderness: for all these nations are
uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the
heart. If the heart is not right with God, vain are all external rites!