PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Isaiah and Jeremiah
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 230,785 words · 340 reading sections
Two Lists Of Names
The names written on earth are swiftly obliterated, like a child's scrawl on the sand which is washed away by the next tide, or covered up by the next storm that blows about the sand-hills. What a contrast is that of the names written on the heavens, high up above all earthly mutations! In one sense oblivion soon seiz…
311 wordsSECTION 302Yokes Of Wood And Iron
'Go and tell Hananiah, saying, Thus saith the Lord; Thou hast broken the yokes of wood; but thou shalt make for them yokes of iron.'--JER. xxviii. 13. I suppose that I had better begin by a word of explanation as to the occasion of this saying. One king of Judah had already been carried off to Babylon, and the throne …
976 wordsSECTION 303Yokes Of Wood And Iron
So much for the individual. But there is another aspect of this same principle on which I venture to say a word, although it is only a word, in passing. I do not suppose that there are many of my hearers who are likely to commit overt breaches of the law. But there are a great many of us who are apt to neglect the obli…
871 wordsSECTION 304Yokes Of Wood And Iron
Now, as long as a man lets the ruling parts of his nature guide the lower faculties, he feels comparatively no pressure from the yoke. But, if he once allows beggars to ride on horseback whilst princes walk--sense and appetite and desire, and more or less refined forms of inclination, to take the place which belongs on…
918 wordsSECTION 305Yokes Of Wood And Iron
But, let me say further, it is better to obey Christ's _commandments_ than to set ourselves against them. For if we will take His will for our law, and meekly assume the yoke of loyal and loving obedience to Him, the door into an earthly paradise is thrown open to us. His yoke is easy, not because its prescriptions and…
585 wordsSECTION 306What The Stable Creation Teaches
'If those ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me for ever.'--JER. xxxi. 36. This is the seal of the new covenant, which is to be made in days future to the prophet and his contemporaries, with the house of Israel and of Judah. That new c…
667 wordsSECTION 307What The Stable Creation Teaches
Scientific godlessness formularises this tendency into a system, and proclaims that laws are everything and God a mere algebraical _x_. III. The lesson which they are meant to teach. God's works are a revelation of God. There is nothing in effect which is not in cause, and the stability of these ordinances carries o…
391 wordsSECTION 308What The Immense Creation Teaches
'If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord.'--JER. xxxi. 37. In the former sermon we considered the previous verse as presenting the stability of creation as a guarantee of the firmness…
689 wordsSECTION 309What The Immense Creation Teaches
The thought of faith is that the material immensity teaches me my God's infinity, and especially His inexhaustible patience with us sinners. It teaches us the unfathomed depths of His gracious heart, and the abysses of His mysterious providence, and the unbounded sweep of His long-suffering forgiveness. His forgiving f…
580 wordsSECTION 310A Threefold Disease And A Twofold Cure.
'I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against Me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against Me.'--JER. xxxiii. 8. Jeremiah was a prisoner in the palace of the last King of Judah. The long, national tragedy had reached a…
691 wordsSECTION 311A Threefold Disease And A Twofold Cure.
First, a sinful life is a twisted or warped life. The word rendered 'iniquity,' in the Old Testament, in all probability literally means something that is not straight, but is bent, or, as I said, twisted or warped. That is a metaphor that runs through a great many languages. I suppose 'right' expresses a corresponding…
671 wordsSECTION 312A Threefold Disease And A Twofold Cure.
The second of them, rendered in our version 'sin,' if I may recur to my former illustration, looks at the snake from a different point of view, and it declares that all sin misses the aim. The meaning of the word in the original is simply 'that which misses its mark.' And the meaning of the prevalent word in the New Te…
716 wordsSECTION 313A Threefold Disease And A Twofold Cure.
There is an old story that speaks of a knight and his company who were travelling through a desert, and suddenly beheld a castle into which they were invited and hospitably welcomed. A feast was spread before them, and each man ate and drank his fill. But as soon as they left the enchanted halls, they were as hungry as…
821 wordsSECTION 314A Threefold Disease And A Twofold Cure.
Do you need pardon? Do you not? What does conscience say? What does the sense of remorse that sometimes blesses you, though it tortures, say? There are tendencies in this generation, as always, but very strong at present, to ignore the fact that all sin must necessarily lead to tremendous consequences of misery. It doe…
462 wordsSECTION 315The Rechabites
'The sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab have performed the commandment of their father, which he commanded them; but this people have not hearkened unto Me.'--JER. xxxv. 16. The Rechabites had lived a nomad life, dwelling in tents, not practising agriculture, abstaining from intoxicants. They were therein obeying the c…
658 wordsSECTION 316Jeremiah'S Roll Burned And Reproduced
God asks from us only what we willingly give to men. Even the qualities and acts, such as love, trust, obedience, which as exercised towards men give dignity and beauty and strength, rise up in judgment to condemn us. There is a sense in which Augustine's often-denounced saying that they are 'splendid vices' is true, f…
661 wordsSECTION 317Jeremiah'S Roll Burned And Reproduced
Further, the warning comes from love. Punishment must needs follow on sin. Even His love must compel God to punish, and to warn before He does. Surely that is kind. His punishments are made known beforehand that we may be sure that caprice and anger have no part in inflicting them, but that they are the settled order o…
576 wordsSECTION 318Zedekiah
'Zedekiah the son of Josiah reigned as king ... whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon made king'--JER. xxxvii. 1. Zedekiah was a small man on a great stage, a weakling set to face circumstances that would have taxed the strongest. He was a youth at his accession to the throne of a distracted kingdom, and if he had had a…
669 wordsSECTION 319Zedekiah
Are there not many of us who have a belief in God and a general acquiescence in Christ's precepts, who order our lives now and then by these, and yet have not come up to the point of full and final surrender? Alas, alas, for the multitudes who are 'not far from the kingdom,' but who never come near enough to be actuall…
404 wordsSECTION 320The World'S Wages To A Prophet
'And it came to pass, that when the army of the Chaldeans was broken up from Jerusalem for fear of Pharaoh's arm, 12. Then Jeremiah went forth out of Jerusalem to go into the land of Benjamin, to separate himself thence in the midst of the people. 13. And when he was in the gate of Benjamin, a captain of the ward was t…
717 wordsSECTION 321The World'S Wages To A Prophet
The real reason for the prophet's wish to leave the city was only too simple. It was to see if he could get 'a portion'--some of his property, or perhaps rather some little store of food--to take back to the famine-scourged city, which, he knew, would soon be again at starvation-point. There appears to have been a litt…
681 wordsSECTION 322The World'S Wages To A Prophet
Zedekiah's temper at the time will be considered presently. Here we have to do with Jeremiah's answer to his question. In it we may note, as equally prominent and beautifully blended, respect, submission, consciousness of peril and impending death, and unshaken boldness. He knew that his life was at the disposal of the…
686 wordsSECTION 323The Last Agony
He is another of the tragic examples, with which all life as well as scripture is studded, of how much evil is possible to a weak character. In this world, where there are so many temptations to be bad, no man will be good who cannot strongly say 'No.' The virtue of strength of will may be but like the rough fence roun…
733 wordsSECTION 324The Last Agony
How many of these fierce soldiers are named in verse 3? At first sight there seem to be six, but that number must be reduced by at least two, for Rab-saris and Rab-mag are official titles, and designate the offices (chief eunuch and chief magician) of the two persons whose names they respectively follow. Possibly Samga…
780 wordsSECTION 325The Last Agony
Down the rocky valley of the Kedron he hurried, and had a long enough start of his pursuers to get to Jericho. Another hour would have seen him safe across Jordan, but the prospect of escape was only dangled before his eyes to make capture more bitter. Probably he was too much absorbed with his misery and fear to feel …
692 wordsSECTION 326Ebedmelech The Ethiopian
Surely the fall of Jerusalem, though all the agony is calmed ages ago, still remains as a solemn beacon-warning that the wages of sin is death, both for nations and individuals; that the threatenings of God's Word are not idle, but will be accomplished to the utmost tittle; and that His patience stretches from generati…
897 wordsSECTION 327God'S Patient Pleadings
IV. The safety given by such uniting faith. To Ebedmelech, escape from death by the besiegers' swords was promised. To us a more blessed safety and exemption from a worse destruction are assured. 'The life which is life indeed' may be ours, and shall assuredly be ours, if our trust knits us to Him who is the Life, and…
692 wordsSECTION 328God'S Patient Pleadings
II. The great purpose of the divine pleadings. To wean from sin is the main end of prophecy. It is the main end of all revelation. God must chiefly desire to make His creatures like Himself. Sin makes a special revelation necessary. Sin determines the form of it. III. God's tender and unwearied efforts. 'Rising earl…
329 wordsSECTION 329The Sword Of The Lord
'O thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still. 7. How can it be quiet, seeing the Lord hath given it a charge?'--JER. xlvii. 6, 7. The prophet is here in the full tide of his prophecies against the nations round about. This paragraph is entirely …
668 wordsSECTION 330The Sword Of The Lord
Current ideas of the love of God distort it by pitting it against His retributive righteousness. Current ideas of sin diminish its gravity by tracing it to heredity or environment, or viewing it as a necessary stage in progress. The sense of God's judicial action is paralysed and all but dead in multitudes. All these …
761 wordsSECTION 331The Kinsman-Redeemer
'Their Redeemer is strong; the Lord of Hosts is His name: He shall thoroughly plead their cause.'--JER. l. 34. Among the remarkable provisions of the Mosaic law there were some very peculiar ones affecting the next-of-kin. The nearest living blood relation to a man had certain obligations and offices to discharge, und…
663 wordsSECTION 332The Kinsman-Redeemer
The obligation on the next-of-kin to buy back alienated property was quite as much imposed on him for the sake of the family as of the individual. The second of his duties was to buy back a member of his family fallen into slavery. 'If a stranger or sojourner with thee be waxen rich, and thy brother be waxen poor besi…
879 wordsSECTION 333The Kinsman-Redeemer
The deepening of the idea from a reference to external and national deliverances, and the large, dim hopes which clustered round it, may be illustrated by one or two significant instances. Take, for example, that mysterious and very beautiful utterance in the Book of Job, where the man, in the very depth of his despair…
652 wordsSECTION 334The Kinsman-Redeemer
This universal King, the kinsman and the sovereign of all the needy, is not God. A human figure is rising before the prophet-psalmist's eye, whose meekness as well as His majesty, and whose kingdom as well as His redeeming power, seem to pass beyond human limits. Divine offices seem to be devolved on a man's shoulders.…
726 wordsSECTION 335The Kinsman-Redeemer
Some of us are just as foolish, and try as desperately to annihilate facts by ignoring them, and to make ourselves free by passionately denying that we are slaves. But 'he that committeth sin is the slave of sin.' That sounds a paradox. I am master of my own actions, you may say, and never freer than when I break the b…
688 wordsSECTION 336The Kinsman-Redeemer
Your Kinsman-Redeemer will keep your lives under His care, and be ready to plead your cause. 'He that touches you, touches the apple of Mine eye.' 'He reproved kings for their sake, saying, Touch not Mine anointed.' Not in vain does the cry go up to Him, 'Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints,'--and if no apparent ret…
298 wordsSECTION 337'As Sodom'
'Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. 2. And he did that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that Jehoiakim had done. 3. For through the anger of the Lord it came…
656 wordsSECTION 338'As Sodom'
An eighteen months' agony is condensed into three verses (Jer. lii. 4-6), in which the minute care to specify dates pathetically reveals the depth of the impression which the first appearance of the besieging army made, and the deeper wound caused by the city's fall. The memory of these days has not faded yet, for both…
799 wordsSECTION 339'As Sodom'
'I backward cast my e'e On prospects drear! An' forward, tho' I canna see, I guess an' fear.' Nebuchadnezzar was in Riblah, away up in the north, waiting the issue of the campaign. Zedekiah was nothing to him but one of the many rebellious vassals of whom he had to make an example lest rebellion should spread, and …
363 wordsSECTION 340*** End Of The Project Gutenberg Ebook Expositions Of Holy Scripture: Isaiah And Jeremiah ***
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.