"They knew not... the voices of the
prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).
"God having... spoken... in the prophets... in
divers manners" (Hebrews 1:1).
Our object in these
chapters will be to see what those divers voices and
manners of God's speaking mean for us in our time and our
lives: not a fullscale study of the Prophets, but just
the salient message for our instruction, comfort,
guidance and - perhaps - warning.
The statement made by
the Apostle Paul in the first quotation above is a very
astonishing and arresting one, and itself becomes a
message and a warning from the Prophets. It says
precisely that on every Sabbath day, over a long period
of years, the Prophets were read in the hearing of a
people, in a great centre like Jerusalem, and in numerous
synagogues far and wide, and, while the words were read
and heard, and while the Prophets were speaking through
the mouths of priests and synagogue-rulers, the people
and their rulers "knew not the voices of the
prophets". Words, Scriptures, sounds, times without
number, but the 'Voice' undiscerned and undetected; that
inner meaning, that vital message, that one inclusive
Object unrecognized. But not only so. The tragic result
of all the hearing was a violent, positive and grievous
contradiction; a doing indeed, but a doing of just
the opposite of what the Prophets meant for the people
concerned. They should have profited by the 'voices', but
they were condemned.
Thus, at the very
outset, we are challenged as to the result, of all our
hearing and the value of all that has come to us. What
will the verdict be when the 'voices' are no longer to be
heard? It is, however, important that we are aware of the
issue upon which the final judgment and verdict will
rest. From many Scriptures, and focused in Hebrews 1:1,
that issue is clearly stated to be the place and measure
given to Jesus Christ, God's Son. This is the consummate
issue in our basic quotation of Acts 13:27: "They
knew him not". Jesus said that all the Prophets
spoke of Him. The Prophets had much to say about many
things: idolatry, bad moral conditions, formal and merely
external religion, etc., but Jesus saw and pointed to
Himself in all the Prophets, and at last made the
significance of the Prophets a personal one as to
Himself. All judgment ultimately will turn, not upon
sins, more or less, few or numerous, but upon the place
and measure given to Christ. Thus the issue bound up with
hearing the Prophets, i.e. the Scriptures, is: how much
of Christ is resultant in us. Not one or many of the
things which comprise Christianity, but the degree of
Himself in us. In the Old Testament Prophets it is
the place of Christ. In the New Testament it is
firstly the place, and then the measure.
All the New Testament
Letters (Epistles) are primarily concerned with the
measure of Christ in believers, individually and
corporately. This final outcome is, according to Acts
13:27 and other Scriptures (such as Isaiah 6:9,10, and
Revelation 2:7,11,17,29, etc.), a matter of spiritual hearing,
or "an ear to hear what the Spirit saith". How
many, like those referred to above, hear the Scriptures
as such, maybe "every sabbath", but fail to
hear 'the voice'. It is with the object of catching the
voice of the Prophets that we essay to consider them and
their message. This preliminary word is important so that
it will not be just and only 'the letter of the Word'.
Let us note that the
failure and its consequences on the part of the people
referred to was not because the Prophets were not
faithful. While it may be true in many cases that the
people are in a tragic or pathetic position because their
teachers and leaders are not faithful, this is not always
the case. That a child at school does not pass the
examinations cannot always be honestly blamed upon the
teacher. The child may be lazy, indolent, careless, or
rebellious. The best and most painstaking teacher has his
- or her - failures. The Prophets gave all that they had,
but still the terrible verdict of Acts 13:27 was true.
The blame rested upon the hearers.
1.
The Voice of Jeremiah
It will be seen that in
our commencing with the Prophet Jeremiah we are not in
the biblical order. We are not here concerned with the
history, geography, nor the chronology of the Prophets,
but primarily with the spiritual message. The
change in order is simply because, at the moment, we are
pressed with the sense that Jeremiah comes nearer to the
heart of personal spiritual need. Here it is the man
himself, in his own suffering, that dominates the
book. Isaiah and Ezekiel have nations, rulers, the making
of history (for a long time to come) and the predictive
and Messianic vision so much in view, while Jeremiah has
less of these features, and is so very largely burdened
with the present and immediate course of things. This is
not by any means the whole truth, but is comparative. The
thing which impresses the reader above all else is the
personal distress of the Prophet, whatever he may say
about nations in chapters 40 to 51.
The message comes
really out of the Prophet himself. This is true of all
Prophets, as we shall see. The personality of Jeremiah is
more in view than is the case of any of the other Major
Prophets and many of the - so-called - Minor. Through his
personality great truths were converted in
spiritual life. While much may be said of the same nature
regarding the other Prophets, of Jeremiah, perhaps it is
true to say that no man was ever more - if as much -
integrated with his message than was Jeremiah. It was
literally wrung out of him like the juice crushed out in
the wine-press.
Let it be here
remembered that the function of the Prophets was
pre-eminently to keep clearly and powerfully before men
what God is like. If we keep this in mind we shall
have the key to each Prophet. God is vari-sided. It has
been said that "There are grounds for believing that
the Figure of the Suffering Servant of the Lord, raised
by the Great Prophet of the Exile, and the idea of the
atoning and redemptive value of His sufferings were, in
part at least, the results of meditation upon the
spiritual loneliness on the one side, and upon the
passionate identification of himself with the sorrows of
his sinful people on the other side, of this the likest
to Christ of all the Prophets." Certainly Jeremiah
foreshadowed the Greater than he Who was "A man of
sorrows, and acquainted with grief". We have said
that God is varisided. Perhaps it would be better to say
that God is love, and love - especially God's love - is
many-sided. There is the sorrow of love; the jealousy of
love; the wrath of love; the insight and understanding of
love; yes, and the hatred of love; etc. Jeremiah was the
embodiment of the sorrows of love - God's love.
Before we go further
into the causes and reasons for God's sorrow, we will
look at the man himself, his call, and his vocation.
There is so much here to help any servant of the Lord who
has to take an unpopular way, plough a lonely furrow,
stand against a strong adverse current, and bear an
unwelcome testimony. Jeremiah can be a great inspiration
to all such.
We cannot do better
than give some extracts from a most helpful
"Introduction" to Jeremiah by the late Dr.
Alexander Stewart. Dr. Stewart wrote:
"Jeremiah
would have inherited the tradition of an illustrious
ancestry, and his early life would have been moulded
by the distinctive religious influences of the
community to which he belonged. God, however, had
'provided some better thing' for him than to spend
his days in serving at the altars of a proscribed and
degenerate priesthood. The young son of Hilkiah had
been appointed to the tremendous destiny of being a
prophet of the Lord in one of the most testing hours
in the history of His chosen people....
"That word (of
the Lord) made known to him, first of all, that he
had been chosen by God for the prophetic ministry
before he ever saw the light of this world (Jer.
1:5). The word which constituted his ordination to
office revealed to him at the same time his foreordination
to that high honour. Nor was this all. The Divine
disclosure also made mention of a preparation for the
tasks which were to engage his strength, a
preparation which stretched away into the mysterious
past, till, in its starting-point at least, it bore
the seal of eternity, and included gifts of...
spiritual consecration which preceded the discipline
of his conscious experience.... His work was to be
unusually extensive in its activities, and for the
most part intensely painful in its character... his
commission was 'to root out, and to pull down, and to
destroy, and to throw down, to build and to plant'.
The two closing terms indicate a generative
purpose... but by far the greater part of his work
was to be of a destructive nature. Both these ends
were, of course, to be achieved by Jeremiah as the
instrument of the resistless energies of the Lord.
"A second
outstanding fact in connection with Jeremiah's call
is his own shrinking from the task with which he was
faced. 'Ah, Lord God!' he cried, 'behold I cannot
speak, for I am a child' (1:6). He was, of course, no
mere child in the literal sense, for he must have
been more than twenty years of age; but he felt
himself a child in knowledge and experience, and he
was specially apprehensive of unfitness for the
prophetic office on the ground of a conscious lack of
the gift of utterance....
"It is a
striking illustration of the mysterious working of
the sovereign will of God that He should have chosen
as 'a prophet unto the nations' a man so apparently
unfitted by temperament and aptitude for that
tremendous task.
"A third
feature of vital significance in Jeremiah's call is
the special equipment which he received for his life
work. This equipment was symbolised by the touch of
the Divine hand on his mouth, an action which was
accompanied by the explanatory assurance, 'Behold I
have put my words in thy mouth' (2:9)....
"Jeremiah's
equipment included also a message from the Lord which
was particularly adapted to his need. It consisted,
first of all, of a word of command in answer to his
protestation of unfitness (1:7). The twice repeated
'Thou shalt', of this solemn charge - 'Thou shalt
go', and 'Thou shalt speak' - swept aside the young
prophet's objections, and made it plain to him that
he must subject himself unreservedly to the authority
of his Divine Master, with respect alike to the
sphere of his labour and to the character of his
message. But the word of command was followed by a
word of gracious encouragement: 'Be not afraid of
their faces; for I am with thee, to deliver thee.'
Hostile faces there certainly would be in plenty -
brows lowered in resentment, eyes flashing in hatred,
and lips curled in scorn or clamorous in
denunciation; but here was a promise of the Lord's
own presence throughout all the days, and in that
fact there lay for Jeremiah a guarantee of strength
and protection amid all the difficulties and dangers
of his future ministry. The prophet certainly needed
a full share of courage, for few men have ever been
confronted with a more formidable task."
If we give some
attention to the times in which our Prophet had to fulfil
his ministry we shall better understand its difficulties,
and perhaps we shall not fail to recognize some
similarities to our own times, thus giving stronger point
to the "Voice".
The
features of Jeremiah's time (also true as to all the
Prophets) were:
1.
Spiritual declension
The lowering and lessening of truly spiritual standards
and values. The loss of the inner and heavenly meaning
of Divine things.
2.
Religious formalism
Religion, yes. All the externals, forms and
techniques were there. The Scriptures had been lost, but
a tradition - of sorts and in measure - still obtained.
But the religion went in one pocket and vital application
to life went through the hole in the other. Jeremiah -
speaking as God - said: "They have forsaken me, the fountain
of living water, and have hewn them out
cisterns, broken cisterns, which can hold no
water." (Italics ours.)
3.
Moral degeneration
There was a perfect landslide of moral standards in
the nation. The vehemence of the hatred demonstrated
against the Prophet was largely due to his high standard
of spiritual and moral purity, and that vehemence showed
how far the nation had gone in this moral degeneration.
4.
Commercial obsession
The criterion of success had become that of material
and commercial gain. Here there had taken place a satanic
twist and distortion. Whereas material prosperity and
advancement were a mark of the blessing of God in that
old dispensation, as the token of Divine approval of
faithfulness to His covenant and word, now the gain had
become divorced from holy living. Thus, the world and its
business had become the enemy of the spiritual life and
sapped it away. The cunning lie of the great deceiver was
that if you had means, money, possessions, etc., you
could serve God with it. But the Prophets said "No,
never!" God said "Away with it; I will take no
sheep from your flock nor ox from your stall. Your gold
and silver are polluted."
"Big
business", commercial engrossment, can become a
fascination, an obsession, and the thief of spiritual
increase.
5.
Pending disaster
There were ominous signs all around. Nations were
warring and restless. One after another kingdoms were
falling. New powers rose on the ashes of old. The air was
full of threats. The only resort for any survival was
greater fierceness and violence. Disaster was no stranger
to consciousness. No one had any sense of security or
assurance of an indefinite tenure of life. This
condition, being specially focused upon Jerusalem, was
reacted to by a false and bolstered-up
"courage", foolhardiness and presumption. Thus
Jeremiah, who kept the pending judgment in view, was
charged with being a traitor and thrown into a dungeon to
silence him. His warnings had been met with faces harder
than a rock (2:23,35; 7:28). Guilt was repudiated,
and correction rejected.
There, for
the present, we must leave the matter, and come back to
consider more fully the ministry of the Prophet. This
"Voice" surely has something - even thus far -
to say to any hard-pressed witness for Christ and servant
of the Lord. The value will - of course - only be derived
by such as are sometimes tempted - like Jeremiah - to
lose heart and feel the impossibility of the situation.