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Rev Graham Harrison Sunday November 7th 2004 p.m.
Jeremiah 12
If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan? [Jeremiah 12:5]
This is my text and I want to place it in the context of the portion of Scripture in which it occurs, [Jeremiah 11:18-12:6]. Here the prophet Jeremiah is at one of the several low points that he passed through in his spiritual experience. He was a man who knew great suffering, great opposition, great affliction. People rejected his message ñ indeed, those who accepted it must have been numbered in the merest handful. The general reaction was that this man, although claiming to be a prophet, is not really a prophet. He is speaking not simply what we do not want to listen to, but he is speaking something that by no stretch of the imagination can come from God! To cap it all, if you listen to what he says, you come to the inevitable conclusion that he is a traitor ó in league with the Babylonians, our great enemy.
Jeremiah had perhaps the most difficult task of all the Old Testament prophets. He knew the critical moment that he was ministering to in the life of the children of Israel. He knew that they were almost at the final hour of Godís judgment descending upon them. Indeed, as you read on in the prophecy, you come not only to the invasion of the Babylonians but to the conquest, the devastation of Jerusalem by them. Many of the inhabitants were killed and those who lived were carried off into captivity in Babylon. Jeremiah himself is eventually taken down against his will into Egypt and that is the last that we hear of him. So, to put it mildly, he was a man who did not have it easy in his ministry. Not surprisingly, in the course of the prophecy that he gives, there are a number of points at which it is as if he plumbs the emotional depths, as far as he himself is concerned. He cannot understand what God is doing. Even more, he cannot understand why God is not moving in judgement upon those people who are so persecuting him. You might have noticed that there is some geography given us here ó the little town of Anathoth, which was a few miles outside Jerusalem, is mentioned. It was a town that was specifically for some of the priests and their families ó and that was the town from which Jeremiah came. He himself came of a priestly family and he was devastated when he discovered that not only the general citizens of Anathoth, but his own kith and kin, his own family, were plotting and scheming against him. They did not often come out into the open and say that, indeed they spoke ëfair wordsí (v.6) unto him. But at the same time their fair words simply disguised the plots and the schemes that they were planning against him.
I began reading in the eleventh chapter because there it is as if he is reminding the Lord that these people were actually threatening his life. They were telling him that the only way in which he could preserve his life was to stop prophesying that message that they obviously believed did not come from God: ëProphesy not in the name of the LORD, that thou die not by our handí [Jeremiah 11:21]. So Jeremiah was in this dilemma; all the human pressures were upon him to stop him from giving this ministry that God had entrusted to him. Yet he knew that he had been called by God to bring this message to the people. That was something that had been indelibly impressed upon him, as God had begun dealing with him. And down through the years of his prophecy ó he is one of the prophets whose ministry stretches over several decades ó he had known the repeated returns of God, to confirm him and to strengthen him in the task that was before him. But here it is as if he almost slips down into the ultimate pit of despair. He is so disconsolate with his predicament. He comes before God and brings the whole situation before Him. It is as if he is saying to the Lord that, as Jeremiah thinks, God ought to do something about it! ëRighteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgmentsí and here is his problem: ëWherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously? Thou hast planted them, yea, they have taken root: they grow, yea, they bring forth fruit: thou art near in their mouth, and far from their reins (far from their heart)í Jeremiah 12:1-2]]. He is looking out on his contemporaries; they do not seem to have any trouble, they are knowing no affliction, they are prospering, they are happy, they mouth words that seem pious but their hearts are far from God ó and God does not seem to be doing anything about it! It perplexes him.
Now that is why I took Psalm 73 as my reading; it is one of a number of Psalms that address the same problem as Jeremiah was facing: ëTruly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slippedí [Ps. 73:1-2]. Then for a number of verses the Psalmist goes on to describe to us why his steps had almost slipped: ëI was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wickedí [v. 3]. Then he goes through all their experience: ëthere are no bands in their death: but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wishí [v. 4-7]. Then in response to all this he says: ëVerily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. For all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morningí [v. 13-14]. There he is on the point of spiritual despair. Suddenly, by the grace of God, he is brought to himself and the rest of the Psalm gives us the answer to that.
But here is something very similar in the life and experience of Jeremiah. I want to deal with this because I am sure it is a problem that many Christian people have often faced. They do not understand why it is that often the wicked seem to prosper, whereas the righteous seem to have trouble upon trouble heaped upon them. Or indeed, coming down you might say to the individual level, if you are not necessarily concerned about the ungodly world outside, you may have often found yourself in this situation. You can honestly say to God that you have tried to serve Him, you have tried to be faithful to Him. But look at all the difficulties, look at the troubles, look at the trials, look at the failures, the disappointments, look at the pressures that are upon you in life. You do not understand. Is not God your heavenly Father? Does He not love you? Why does He allow these things to happen to you and to your loved ones? It is not an uncommon experience.
But Jeremiah is really instructive to us. I was looking at old Matthew Henryís commentary on th ese words: ëRighteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?í [Jeremiah 12;1] This is what Matthew Henry says : ëThe prophet doubts not that it would be of use to others to know what had passed between God and his own soulí ó in other words this is why it is in the word of God ó ëwhat temptations he had been assaulted with and how he had got over them; and therefore he here tells us, first of all, what liberty he humbly took, and was graciously allowed him, to reason with God concerning His judgments [v.1]. He is about to plead with God, not to quarrel with Him. Or find fault with His proceedings, but to enquire in to the meaning of them. Ö We may not strive with our Maker, but we may reason with Him Ö When we are most in the dark concerning the meaning of Godís dispensations we must still resolve to keep up right thoughts of God, and must be confident of this, that He never did, nor ever will do, the least wrong to any of His creatures.í
What Matthew Henry is doing is to emphasize to us the way this twelfth chapter begins. Here is poor Jeremiah in this terrible affliction and bewilderment. But he holds on to this truth: ëRighteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk (let me reason) with thee of thy judgmentsí [Jeremiah 12;1]. Or going back to that seventy-third Psalm, you have exactly the same thing. Once you come to verse three you have the predicament of the Psalmist: ëFor I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.í And on and on he goes for a dozen or so verses in that theme. But he does not begin like that! ëTruly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slippedí [Ps. 73; 1-2]. In other words he is recognising certain truths about God; God is righteous, God is our heavenly Father. We may not always understand what He is doing ó but we must never allow our perplexity and our lack of understanding to cause us to bring accusations against God. We simply rest by faith in the fact that God is righteous. Matthew Henry goes on ó and you might say he has a word for preachers ó ëWe often find the prophets admonished, whose business it was to admonish others Ö Ministers have lessons to learn as well as lessons to teach, and must themselves hear Godís voice and preach to themselves.í In a sense that is what Jeremiah is doing here. He who so often is preaching to others, rebuking and condemning them, calling them to obedience to God ó what you find him doing here is to take something of his own medicine and to listen to what God is saying to him!
Now God is going to deal with him in the course of these verses and that is what I want to draw your attention to. But, before I go any farther let me point out that it underlines the sheer humanity of the prophet! Here is a man ó yes, he is a great man ó but oh! he is so very like us, is he not? He knows all our feelings, all our anxieties; he feels the rising in his own heart of all those resentful thoughts that maybe sometimes we have towards God; all our perplexities regarding the ways of God, you find them here in the experience of Jeremiah. And what God does is to deal with the prophet ó to help him! It is a comfort to remember that these great men of God, whether you take them from scripture or church history, are ordinary flesh and blood, just like the rest of us. They knew all the trials, all the afflictions, that will ever come to us ó and that I find a comfort.
But think what it was that Jeremiah had to put up with! An unpopular message to preach; nobody was going to give him three cheers for preaching this message ó but it was the message that God had called him to preach and God had given him to preach. It was a message that was calculated to irritate, if not to anger, the people to whom it was preached. Yes, when God laid His hand upon him and called him, he had partly been warned of this by God. Back in the first chapter he is trying to reject the call of God: ëAh, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the LORDí [v. 6-8]. Then that first chapter comes to a conclusion that must have been the stay and consolation of Jeremiah on many an occasion: ëBe not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them. For, behold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brasen walls against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, against the priests thereof, and against the people of the land. And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith the LORD, to deliver theeí [Jeremiah 1:17-19]. And that is how God had reassured him as he had embarked on this awesome ministry.
But it must have hit him very hard when he discovered that those people that he had been brought up with and lived amongst, his fellow priests and their families ó and even worse, his own family óhad turned against him and were even involved in plotting and scheming to have him assassinated. That is what becomes evident as you read through the book of Jeremiah. How do you cope with something like that? But that was the sort of experience that Jeremiah had to put up with! Of course, when you are facing anything like that, you are under great temptation. And the first temptation is to back off, to go silent, not to speak this message that you know is going to be offensive and will provoke people to react against you. You would be silent; you would tend to say, ëWell, what is the use, what is the point? Where will it get me? They will not listen to it; it will not do them any good; it is not going to do me any good, either!í
That can be coupled with the very real factor of fear, physical fear! It is all very well for us to theorise about peril and danger, but when you are in a Jeremiah situation, when you know ó and indeed this was to become not merely a threat but a reality ó that they are likely to take you, to beat you, to put you in prison, and given the opportunity they are likely to kill you ó do you not feel a coward? Do you not feel fear and trepidation faced with that? Certainly that was Jeremiahís experience. What must be the lot, for example, of many a Christian today in a country that is virulently anti-Christian. Think particularly of some of the many Muslim lands of the world, where it can be a perilous thing, openly and confessedly to be a Christian. Or, thank God, we are not in that situation but as things are developing in our own country ó and there is an anti-Christian attitude becoming more open, more belligerent ó the screws are beginning to be turned on Christians. It can be difficult to stand your ground. The temptation, as I say, is to back off. Or to do as Jeremiah did; to call out to God to come in immediate judgment upon them, and in vindication of you. And that was something that God was not going to do! Godís judgment did come ó but not yet! And Godís vindication was to be given to Jeremiah, but not yet! Meanwhile it was so hard for Jeremiah.
Later he comes into head-on conflict with the great authorities in the nation, the princes, the rulers, the priests and the kings. A succession of kings came one after the other and each one was virtually as bad as the one that went before ó and they are all against him! Sometimes the so called spiritual leaders of the nation ridiculed him. God had told Jeremiah on one occasion to make a yoke and wear it and it was to become a sort of act of symbolism, indicating what was going to happen to the people who were going to come under th e yoke of the Babylonians. So he did that [Jeremiah 27:2]. Then one of the leading religious men comes and snatching the yolk off Jeremiah says, ëThat is what God is going to do!í [Jeremiah 28:10] It was nonsense, of course, but there everybody thought that this other man, Hananiah, was Godís spokesman and Jeremiah was the very opposite.
Or how would you feel, had you been Jeremiah and had been given this prophecy; you painstakingly get it written out and you have it read in the Temple. Some of the princes are so impressed with the message that they say ëThe king must hear this! The king needs to hear this!í So arrangements are made for the scroll to be taken into the presence of King Jehoiakim. It was in the winter and he sat by the fire, and he got somebody to read it. As page after page was read he took out his pen-knife and cuts up the scroll and throws it into the fire and it is consumed! How would you feel if that was happening to your God-given message that you had been able to bring before the king?
Then eventually he is thrown into prison, a miserable muddy pit. He is starving and it must have seemed that the end had come. Then after he had been delivered from that and the nation is overcome by the Babylonians, what happens to Jeremiah and some of the other survivors? He goes down to Egypt, or rather he is taken down to Egypt. They had asked him what they should do. By now he has been vindicated; he was right and had been proved to be right. So they come asking, ëWhat are we to do in our predicament?í He says, ëYou are not to go to Egypt! You are to stay here!í But they will not listen to him and so they take him down to Egypt and we do not know what eventually became of him! You can well understand why some people have described Jeremiah as ëthe weeping prophetí. He had a life of unparalleled disappointment and misery and affliction beyond that of any other Old Testament prophet.
So why is this here in the word of God? Well, it really happened; that is why! And God is recording it so that we know that it really happened. Jeremiah of all men; this great spiritual giant of a man ó he knew what it was to be brought down almost into the total depths of despair and hopelessness. I believe it is here because very often Christians know something of the same! Down they go into a sense of hopelessness and despair. They do not understand what is happening; God is not working according to their agenda and the result is that they become miserable, unhappy, they are at the point of bringing all sorts of accusations against God. And here God graciously has said, ëHave you forgotten Jeremiah? Have you forgotten that this great servant of mine was almost in a parallel situation? He knew your temptations; he knew what it was to say, ëWhy Lord? Lord it is not fair! Lord can you really be sovereign and in control of things if you are letting this happen? How do you reconcile this with the love of God?í Jeremiah knew all that and so God has recorded it for us.
Sometimes people have the wrong idea of what it is to be a Christian. They think that if you become a Christian all your problems are over ó it is plain sailing all the way through life to heaven ó no trouble, no affliction, no difficulty. Indeed there are Christians today, not so many of them in this country as there would be in America, who believe in what they call health, wealth and prosperity. If you are a good Christian, you will be healthy, you will not be ill, you will be wealthy, you will be prosperous. And if you are not healthy, or if you are not wealthy and therefore not prosperous, well that is really telling something very sad about your real spiritual condition. That is how they reason. It can be very depressing to be faced by something like that, especially when it seems, as would have been the case with Jeremiah, that everything was going wrong. All the afflictions were coming upon him. But the word of God never promises us anything like that! Indeed, it indicates to us that maybe in this life things will be hard and difficult. The world will not applaud you for being a Christian; and if you are faithful and God-honouring, there may be all sorts of troubles that are heaped upon you that would never come to you otherwise in the normal course of events. So here God is giving to us something of the principles, the fundamentals, that we are to hold on to when we know a touch of that affliction that the Jeremiahs of this world have to pass through.
I want you to notice how God deals with the prophet. In verses 1-4 of Jeremiah chapter twelve, we have Jeremiah speaking to God, reasoning with God, putting his case to God. But in verse five, my text, God speaks and this is what He says:í If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?í
There are two illustrations here. In the first you have been in a foot race with other human beings and you are complaining about that, you are finding that hard and difficult. What if you had to race against men on horseback? How are you going to cope then? Or the other illustration; you are in this land of peace wherein you trust and you are finding that hard and difficult. What if you are down by Jordan when the river overflows in a time of flood and maybe all the wild animals that are there in the thickets along the bank are driven out? How are you going to cope with that? You might say, ëWell Lord, that is not what I want to hear! It is difficult enough as it is and it is as if you are saying that it might be worse to come!í So what God is doing is to say something that seems to be strange. He does not seem to be coming and offering sympathy to the prophet. He is not saying, ëAh, yes Jeremiah, I understand your predicament. Do not worry; it is all going to be over! I am going to reverse my policy and these problems that you are experiencing are going to be history before very long! You will soon be riding on the crest of a wave and all will be joy and gladness!í
No, that is not what God says! ëIf thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses?í In effect it amounts to a rebuke, a gentle rebuke, but nevertheless a rebuke from God to the prophet. God is indicating to him that these trials that he has experienced already presage worse to come! If you read through the remainder of the book of Jeremiah ó and I have given you some indication of a few of the problems that were yet to arise ó you will find that God is saying to him, ëIf you cannot cope with your present existence, Jeremiah, how will you manage when harder times come?í
There is a remarkable hymn by John Newton.
I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith, and love, and every grace,
Might more of His salvation know,
And seek more earnestly His face.
So there is a man making a good, spiritual request to God; he wants to be more godly, he wants to be more Christ-like.
ëTwas He who taught me thus to pray.
And He, I trust, has answered prayer;
But it has been in such a way
As almost drove me to despair.
I hoped that in some favoured hour
At once Heíd answer my request;
And, by His loveís constraining power,
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.
Instead of this, He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart,
And let the angry powers of hell
Assault my soul in every part.
Yes, more, with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe,
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.
ìLord, why is this?î I trembling cried,
ìWilt Thou pursue Thy worm to death?î
ìëTis in this wayî, the Lord replied,
ìI answer prayer for grace and faith.
ìThese inward trials I employ,
From pride and self to set thee free,
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou mayest seek thy all in Me.î
John Newton, the author of that hymn, understood Jeremiahís plight and Jeremiahís temptation. It runs counter to so much of modern teaching. When two of the disciples, James and John, aided and abetted, or perhaps provoked, by their own mother, came to the Lord Jesus Christ and tried to ëbagí the two top places in heaven. Our Lord indicated to them that it was not His to give. But He asked them a question, ëAre you able to be baptised with the baptism that I am baptised?í [Matt. 20:22]. He is not thinking of water baptism, He is thinking of the overwhelming suffering that is going to come upon Him. In other words, He indicates to them that there is difficulty ahead. Or the apostle Paul, at the end of his life when he is writing to Timothy, has to tell him that all sorts of afflictions will come upon the Christian. ëYea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecutioní [2 Timothy 3:12]. No doubt he was thinking back to what is found in Acts 14. Paul has been stoned and left for dead; but he is not dead. He gets up, goes on to the Christians in the city and moves on to other places preaching. Then he returns to the places that he had been preaching in, ëconfirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of Godí [v.22].
What God sometimes does, and this is what He is saying to Jeremiah, is to prepare us for greater hardship to come by taking us through lesser hardships and enabling us to cope with them. We do not like it, but it is necessary. You might say that it is a principle that in a physical sense any athlete works upon; he gives himself to training, driving his body to the utmost limits that it is capable of reaching. Then that is not good enough; the next day or the next week he has to exceed those limits, because he knows that the race or the contest that is coming is really going to test him beyond his limits. So he gradually builds up his strength and his endurance. That is what God is saying to Jeremiah: ëIf thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?í [Jeremiah 12:5].
But that is not the whole story! God does that, and it may be a help to us to remember this when we are passing through trouble and affliction. But, as I said, it is not the whole story. Read through Jeremiah and you come to these low points of his experience ó but do not take those as typical! Read some of the other things; read when it is as if he is lifted up by the Spirit of God and although outwardly his circumstances have not changed ó the threats are as malignant as they have ever been ó he is able to rise up with a triumph of faith and overcome all these difficulties and troubles. Again and again you have it repeated. ëO Lord, though our iniquities testify against us, do thou it for thy nameís sake: for our backslidings are many; we have sinned against thee. O the hope of Israel, the Saviour thereof in time of trouble, why shouldst thou be as a stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man that turneth aside to tarry for a night? [Jeremiah 14:7.8]. On and on he goes with these high spots, as you might describe them, of blessing. ëBlessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruití [Jeremiah 17:7-8; cf. 23:5-10; 30:10-31: 3].
It is the same Jeremiah ó ah, but Godís grace is lifting him up. God is encouraging him; God is showing him the promises of God. You have some of the greatest promises in the Old Testament: ëBehold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that they shall no more say, The LORD liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But, The LORD liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own landí [Jeremiah 23:5-8]. In chapter after chapter Jeremiah gives us promises like that.
When you are down in the depths of despair and hopelessness, when you are bewildered, when you do not understand what God is doing; when, to put it plainly, if you had been God, you would not plan it like this ó what are you to do? You are to hold on to the promises of God. You are to believe in the grace of God. There is that lovely verse in the epistles of Paul, ëMy grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weaknessí [2 Corinthians 12:9]. The strength of God is something that comes when we need it most. God does not break His promises and Jeremiah was to prove that in his own experience. So, yes, God may be taking you through present trials, partly as a preparation for even greater difficulties to come. But whatever the difficulty might be, Godís grace is sufficient. Godís promises will see you through and one day you will be able to look back and thank God. Yes, you were able to come, you were able to reason with Him, to plead with Him. But you thank Him for what He showed you and how He led you.
Amen
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