1 Ruskin, Stones of Venice, vol. ii chap. ii. § 87 ( Works, xi. 116).
Everlasting Love.
\
JER.-MAL. — 8
Literature.
Armitage (W. J.), The Fruit of the Spirit, 11.
Curling (E.), The Transfiguration, 102.
Davies (T.), Sermons, ii. 53.
Hutton (R. E.), The Crown of Christ, ii. 253.
Landels (W.), Until the Day Break, 58.
Macintosh (W.), Rabbi Jesus, 57.
McLean (A.), Where the Book Speaks, 200.
Martin (S.), Fifty Sermons, 171.
Matheson (G.), Thoughts for Life's Journey, 70.
Paget (E. C), Silence, 65.
Pearse (M. G.), Parables and Pictures, 52.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxxii. (1886), No.
1914 ; 1. (1904), No. 2880. Stewart (J.), Outlines of Discourses, 174. Tulloch (J.), Sundays at Balmoral, 18.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), v. (1867), No. 521. Christian Commonwealth, xxxiv. 285 (R. J. Campbell). Christian World Pulpit, xxv. 209 (J. Tulloch) ; lvii. 109 (J. S. Maver). Homiletic Review, lxi. 147 (H. W. Battle).
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Everlasting Love.
The Lord appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love : therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.— Jer. xxxi. 3.
This tender and gracious assurance appears here in a somewhat unexpected connexion. The Book of Jeremiah, taken as a whole, is a sad book ; it consists in the main of warnings, expostulations, and prophecies of doom; and these prophecies are shown in process of fulfilment almost while they were being uttered. It is a sombre picture of human life which is presented to us in these vivid pages. And yet here we have, in the very midst of all this darkness and all these oracles of stern judgment, the sweet utter- ance which forms the text : " The Lord appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love : therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee." With lovingkindness ? Loved with an everlasting love ? Nothing could have seemed less like it just then. Fierce, terrible, merciless were the ways of God to Israel so far as appearances went, and not without cause. Love was about the last word that could describe the relations of these suffering people to their offended God.
Think what the circumstances were. The chosen people were ripe for judgment. There were two invasions within a few years of each other, each of them involving a siege of Jerusalem and the carrying away of thousands of prisoners into captivity. The scenes of horror associated with both must have been indescrib- ably dreadful, especially after the second, when Jerusalem was left a heap of smoking ruins. It was in the interval between these two sieges that the text was most probably spoken, and the fact is surprising when we consider the circumstances. The prophet's view is that God's love is not shown by His leaving His people to perish morally in the slough of an enervating security, but rather in the infliction of suffering which purifies the soul by
n6 EVERLASTING LOVE
the discipline of the flesh. He holds, with wonderful insight, that their sorrows not only are punishments for their sins, but are of the nature of a drastic preparation for the unique work which Israel had yet to do in the world. He foretells the return from the Captivity, which at the moment was only just beginning — in fact, the greater of the two Captivities had not yet taken place ; Jerusalem was still standing and autonomous at the time the prophecy was uttered. Jeremiah says that after seventy years the exiles will be permitted to return to their own land, and then will commence their distinctive spiritual mission to all the nations upon earth. And this, as we now know, came true to the letter.
There are three strands in the prophet's thought — I. The love of God lies behind the darkest experiences of
life. II. This love is everlasting and changeless. III. It is a tender and individual love, manifesting itself as lovingkindness.
I.
Love Offered from Afar.
11 The Lord appeared of old unto me."
1. The words, " The Lord appeared of old unto me, saying," etc., might mean either that the prophet had been convinced from early days, as well as all through the period of affliction, that God is a God of love ; or it might mean, and more probably does mean, as the Hebrew literally states, " The Lord appeared from afar unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love." The expression " from afar " suggests the more beautiful idea of the two. The thought is that God hears, as it were, from afar, the cry of His children and comes to their relief. The image suggested is that of the poor enslaved children of Zion far away in a strange land stretching their hands towards their ancient home and praying to God, whose altar once stood there, to come to their deliverance ; and God hears that prayer and comes and breaks down their prison walls and brings them back.
JEREMIAH xxxi. 3 117
1} Jeremiah represents Jehovah as seeking to win back His chosen people to Himself under the figure of a lover wooing a maiden. Jehovah speaks from His far-away dwelling-place, and when the " virgin of Israel," in her distant exile, hears him, she answers, " From afar Jehovah appeared unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love."