II. They are the peoducts and proofs of the love of (Jod to mah. Hence : 1. The heart of the parent is filled with love to his children. 2. This love leads to desire earnestly the cliild's well-being. 3. To secure this, God has given (1) a respon- sive love in the heart of the child towards its parent ; (2) the instinct of trust ; (3) the direct sanctions of his Word, his Spirit, his providence, to strengthen and maintain that filial piety which so ministers to the <:ood of all.
III. The great Exemplab op such piety. Out Lord Jesug Christ. "I do always," he said, " those things which please my Father." As God is the realization of perfect fatherhood, so is the Lord Jesus Christ the embodiment of perfect sonship. That sonship was tested and tried as no human sonship ever can be, and it never failed, even under the pressure of the agony, the cross, the seeming abandonment. In him, therefore, we see our Model, and in his exaltation now our reward. — 0.
Vers. 1 — 11. — The power of a father's command. The Rechabite habit is, of course, brought forward here to contrast obedience to an earthly and arbitrary demand with the disolicdience of Israel to heavenly and essentially righteous laws. But it is worth while to look into this Rechabite habit altogether, in its origin, its causes, its results, its power.
I. The OBiaiN of this habit. The only information we have here is that the habit originated in a command of Jonadab. But, of course, Jonadab must have had some reason seeming weighty to him ; and on looking at 2 Kings x. we can make a shrewd guess as to the ends he had in view. He sees the sanguinary and extirpating zeal oi Jehu against the scions of Ahab and the worshippers of Baal, and is it not fair to pre- sume that he wished to guard his kinsfolk and posterity against falling into idolatry such as would involve a like terrible fate ? > Then it occurs to him that he csm best do this by separating his people from the dwellers in IsraeL This can best be done by urging on them to live a wandering and pastoral life ; and stUl again, the tent life is to be secured by separating the Kechabites from the Israelites in their pleasures. The Rechabite has his plain rule of conduct : " I drink no wine." "Very well," says the indulgent, idolatrous Israelite, "I care not for your .company." Idolatry was always connected with debauchery, sensuality, and indulgence of animal passions, and to all these things wine might come to be a minister. Unquestionably Jonadab was a shrewd man, and something of what he aimed at he seems to have gained.
II. The test of this habit. No doubt the habit had often been tested, and presumably the same answer would ever be given : " Our father has commanded us to drink no wine." Was it a sufficient reason, one may ask ? To which it may be replied that, generally speaking, a father's command would not be enough. We must always ask — What is the thing commanded ? Here the question is simply one of positive precept. No one could say that drinking wine was a moral duty, or that the Bechabites injured any one by refusing to drink it. And, indeed, they might have enlarged on the advan- tages that had come to them through their strict compliance with Jonadab's command. But, in doing so, they entered on debatable ground, and might have been forced into argument. They did the best thing in their position — they fell back on • simple, unreasoning assertion of ancestral custom. Notice, too, the circumstances in which this habit was tested. They are divinely prepared circumstances. It is not a band of revellers in the house of feasting who ask them to drink wine. God commands it to be put before them in the house of the Lord, and in the chamber of a man of God. God wishes his people to see for themselves the power of a paternal request ; for never before surely had the reasons seemed so great for depai°tlng from the rule.
III. The disadvantages of this habit. The habit did secure what Jonadab meant it to secure. The R^echabites had been kept apart from Israel. But now notice that an advantage gained from some purely external practice is very likely to have Bome accompanying disadvantage. The Bechabites become tent-dwellers, and then, on the approach of the Chaldeans, having no continuing city, no place of defence, they fle«
102 THE BOOK OP THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. Lch xxxt. 1—19.
to Jerusalem. After all, the principle of Rechabitism, the principle of separation and isolation, has its limits. If we would fairly claim the advantages of human society in times of peril, we mnst not play the hermit and ascetic at other times. To be in the world and yet not ol it, that is both the problem and the possibility. — Y.
Vers. 12 — 17. — Bechahites unconsciously reproving Israelites, I. How fab the men OP JuDAH WERE REALLY ooNnEMNED ; «.«. How far Were the cases really parallel ? The first question to be asked is — Were the men of Judah as able to obey the command- ments of Jehovah as the Rechabites were to obey the precept of Jonadab? and, of course, the answer is that for many reasons they were not. But passing this over for the present, let us notice the one respect in which Israelites were lamentably different from Kechabitea. The Rechabites gloried in their attachment to the precept of their ancestor ; it was a sort of point of honour with them ; whereas the Israelites were in no way grieved, humiliated, or ashamed because of their disobedience. If only it had been a continual and sore trouble of heart that there was not in them strength to obey God, why, this very trouble would have been a measure of obedience. But they both dis- obeyed and disobeyed in the most heedless and audacious way. Instead of receiving prophets with contrition and as messengers of God, they laughed them to scorn, abused them, and even put them to death. And similarly the Rechabites reprove us. In the midst of all our natural inability to give a true obedience to Divine requirements, we should be incessantly troubled by this ; then would the way be made open for revealing to us how obedience becomes possible.