Chapter 15: The Ministry of Destruction
Chapter 15: The Ministry of Destruction
(JEREMIAH 27-29)
"Ours the shame to understand
That the world prefers the lie;
That, with medicine in her hand,
She will sink and choose to die
Ours the agonising sense.
Of the heaven this earth might be,
If, from their blank indifference,
Men woke one hour and felt as we!"
HOUGHTON.
WHEN JEREMIAH WAS first summoned to the work of prophet, it was summarized under six distinct divisions. He was set over nations and kingdoms to pluck up, and to break down, and to destroy, and to overthrow; to build and to plant (i. 10). Two-thirds of his work was therefore in the direction of destruction. It is not pleasant or easy work. No one would choose to stand amid the choking dust of the crumbling brickwork, which is being destroyed to make way for some palatial structure to be erected on the site. Vested interests, long-established abuses, lucrative wrongs, cry out loudly against any attempt to interfere with their existence. But Elijah must precede Elisha; and John the Baptist must prepare the way for Christ. Before the seed-sowing, the plough; before the outburst of the spring, the stern disintegration of winter, rubbing the soil to powder in its mighty hands. Such was the work that fell to the lot of Jeremiah.
I. THE WORK OF DEMOLITION.—
(I) Jehoiakim.—When Josiah died, the whole land mourned. Each citizen felt personally bereaved, and appropriated the plaintive cries of professional mourners, saying, "Ah, my brother" and "Ah, sister!" The air was full of the words, "Ah, Lord!" "Ah, the glory of Israel!" But Jeremiah foretold that at the death of Jehoiakim there should be no such expression. "He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem." And again, somewhat later, when the king in impious defiance had burnt the roll, the prophet said, "He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David; and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, in the night to the frost" (xxii. 13-19; 36:29-31).
The words of the prophet carried with them the imprimatur of Jehovah. They pronounced the inevitable sentence which He executed. And, therefore, though we have no certain record of the manner of it, it is more than probable that on his return from his second journey to Babylon, Jeremiah received the tidings of the death of his inveterate foe. There are several traditions as to his death—one that he was assassinated in the streets of Jerusalem; another that he fell in a skirmish with raiders, who had been incited by Nebuchadnezzar to desolate the neighbourhood of Jerusalem; another that he was enticed to the camp of the king of Babylon, and there treacherously murdered; but he died as he lived, dishonourably and miserably.
(2) Jeconiah.—His was a reign, like Napoleon's after his return from Elba, of one hundred days. He was eighteen when he was called to the throne, and he occupied it 'for three months and ten days (2 Chron. 36:9); but in that brief time he was able to show the drift of his character. "He did evil in the sight of the Lord." His mother, Nehushta, daughter of Elnathan, whose hands had been imbrued in the murder of Urijah, and the strong heathen party who dominated the policy of the court, between them moulded the young monarch to their will.
Jeremiah uttered words of awful significance. Passing through the streets he showed the marred linen girdle, and foretold the doom of the king and queen-mother. "Sit down," he cried, "in the dust; for the crown of royalty shall be rolled from your brow to the ground. The cities in the south country, the beautiful flock of towns and villages, are already in the hands of the invader; and the whole land shall shortly be carried into captivity, because of the abominations, the pollution, the idolatries that have been perpetrated on the hills of the field." Then. coming to closer dealings with the royal pair, he said that Coniah should be given into the hands of them that sought his life, and of those of whom he was afraid; that Jehovah would cast his mother and himself, like a despised broken vessel, into another country, where they were not born; that there they should die; and that there should be no return to the land they loved (xiii. 18-21; 22:28-30).
Thus, too, it befell. Such was the bitter fierceness of the Chaldeans, who were again besieging the city to punish Jehoiakim's perfidy, that nothing would appease them but the surrender of the persons of the king and his mother. There was no alternative; and so, Josephus tells us, a sad procession was formed, and through a gateway—which afterwards bore the king's name, but was bricked up so that none might pass by a path which had been the scene of such a disaster—the king, his mother, the nobles and officials, went forth to the Chaldean camp, and sat down on the ground, their persons robed in black, and their faces veiled. By this time Nebuchadnezzar had returned from fighting against Pharaoh-Necho, who had marched to the relief of his ally, but had been finally quelled; and he received in person the submission of the royal fugitives (2 Kings 24:7).
The spoliation of the city followed. The Temple was stripped of its gold and treasures. All the princes, and the mighty men of valour, the craftsmen and the smiths, the king's harem and court officials, were manacled in long lines, and torn from their beloved country, which the majority of them were never again to behold. Ezekiel was one of that sad procession; and it seemed as though a pitiful wail arose from the whole country—from Lebanon, and Bashan, and Abarim—as the exiles wended their way to their distant destination. And the prophet wept sore, his eye ran down with tears, because the Lord's flock was taken captive.
(3) The Prophets.—The prophets were a large and influential class. Dating from the days of Samuel, their schools had poured forth a succession of men, who occupied a unique position in the land, as the representatives of God. But in the degenerate days of which we are now writing, when the kingdom of Judah was rapidly tottering to its fall, they seem to have been deeply infected by the prevailing vices of their time. They were, as Isaiah says, "dumb dogs which could not bark." Greedy and drunken, lazy and dissolute, dreaming, lying down, and loving to slumber, they denied the Lord, and said, when Jeremiah spoke, "It is not He." They had become wind, and the word of God was not in them (Isa. 56:9-12; Jer. 5:12, 13).
It must have been very painful for Jeremiah to oppose them, and counteract their influence on the people; but he had no alternative. His heart was broken, and his bones shook; he was in a stupor like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine had overcome, for both prophet and priest were profane; and in God's own house wickedness was rife. Listen to these terrible words, spoken in the name of Jehovah, "In the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies; they strengthen also the hands of evil-doers, that none doth return from his wickedness; they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah" (xxiii. 9-14).
Jeremiah entreated his people not to hearken to these men, who spoke the vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord. Their fatal crime was to live on the traditions of the past, and to encourage even those who walked in the stubbornness of their hearts, by assuring them that no evil should come on them. They deliberately set themselves to lessen the power of Jeremiah's appeals and protestations by the promulgation of their own lying dreams; as though they, and not he, were in Jehovah's secrets.
Matters came to a pass shortly after the deportation of Jeconiah. Hananiah, of Gibeon, which was one of the priestly settlements, rose up and publicly contradicted Jeremiah when he was speaking in the Temple, in the presence of the priests and of all the people. Using the holy name of Jehovah, he declared it had been divinely revealed to him that in two years Jeconiah, and all the captives, and all the sacred vessels, which Nebuchadnezzar had taken away, would come again. Instantly Jeremiah spoke up from amid the crowd. "Amen," he cried; "would that it might be so; would that Jehovah might bring again the captivity: but it shall not be; nay, it cannot be, without cancelling words that have been uttered by Him through the prophets before me, and of old."
Not content, however, with his words, the false prophet snatched from Jeremiah's shoulders the wooden yoke which he carried for the purpose of perpetually reminding his people and the neighbouring nations that they must serve the king of Babylon until the appointed time had gone. He broke it in twain, saying, that similarly God within two years would break Nebuchadnezzar's yoke. Jeremiah did not prolong the altercation; but privately told Hananiah that the yoke of wood would be replaced by one of iron, and that he was causing the people to trust a lie. "This year thou shalt die," he said, as he turned away; and two months after the false prophet was a corpse.
(4) The Surrounding Nations.—On two occasions Jeremiah protested against a combination of the surrounding nations to resist the growing power of Babylon, which without doubt was fostered by the neighbouring power of Egypt. On the first occasion he said that they would have to drink the cup of the Lord's fury; and on the second, that they must bear the yoke of Babylon " Now have I given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and all the nations shall serve him, and his son, and his son's son, until the time of his own land come" (xxv. and xxvii.).
All this must have laid the prophet open to the charge of the want of patriotism; his words weakened the people of the land; his influence withheld them from joining a great league of emancipation. He had no alternative, however, but to be spokesman of that great word of Jehovah, "I will overturn, overturn, overturn."
(5) The Exiles.—The false prophets had suffered the fate of their nation, and were with the rest in captivity; they at once endeavoured to raise the hopes of the exiles, by prophesying a speedy return. "It is of no use," they said in effect, "to build houses, or plant gardens, or enter into marriage relations. In a short time we shall be back again in Jerusalem." The ringleaders were Zedekiah and Ahab, men of grossly immoral life, who were made an example of by being roasted alive (xxix. 21- 23). Still the ferment continued, and the people refused to settle down into contentment with the conditions of their captivity.
Jeremiah therefore wrote a letter, which was entrusted to two men of high rank, friendly to himself, whom Zedekiah, the uncle and successor of Jeconiah, sent to Babylon with assurances of his fidelity. "Yield to the will of God" was the burden of the letter. "Build, plant, settle." "Seek the peace of the city whither God has caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace." When Shemaiah, one of these false prophets, heard this letter, he wrote off in hot haste to Zephaniah, who was now high priest, and demanded that the prophet should be put into stocks, and his head into a collar, as a madman. The high priest, however, contented himself with reading the letter to Jeremiah, who replied by sending a second letter to the exiles, assuring them that God would punish Shemaiah and his seed, so that he should not have a son to perpetuate his name, and should not see the good which could come at the end of the predestined time (xxix.).
These denunciations were fraught with terror; and equally terrible was the fate which befell these men. It may be said, "Surely they were patriots, eager for the deliverance of their people. They were fanatical enthusiasts, not intentional criminals. They mistook their hopes for revelations." But it should be remembered that they were also convicted of immoral and evil lives. Their sins had blunted their perceptions of the Divine voice, whilst their words pandered to their people's sins, and encouraged them in their lewd idolatries. It was as vicious and fallen men, as well as false prophets, that they incurred the awful woes which befell them, both from the lip of the prophet and the hand of the Almighty.
II. HIS COADJUTOR. —Whilst Jeremiah was exercising this ministry of destruction in utter loneliness and isolation, his heart must have often misgiven him. Remember that he loved his country with all the passionate patriotism of which the Jewish nature was capable, and which expresses itself so plaintively in the Book of Lamentations. Matthew Henry says, "It is not easy to preach Christ crucified in a crucified spirit." But Jeremiah did a harder thing. Though for forty years he was constantly in antagonism with the sins and vices of the people, the fountain of tears within his soul seems never to have dried up or become frozen over. He preached the terrors of Sinai with the pathos of Calvary.
It was just because he loved so much that he suffered so keenly. And this may comfort others in their dark sorrow and despair for their fellows. They say that their natures are too tender and affectionate, and that they feel everything too keenly; as though to infer that they would wish to have been clothed in tougher skin, and cast in a rougher mould. But surely it would be a fatal mistake to barter a tender heart with its faculty of suffering for a callous one without that liability. "Our sorrow," says Carlyle, "is the inverted image of our nobleness. The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope. Black smoke, as of Tophet, filling all your universe, it can yet by true heart energy become flame and brilliancy of Heaven. Courage!"
You fear to love, lest you may have to suffer; but, ah, how infinitely you lose! You may have an immunity from one sort of pain; but you certainly incur the pain of a selfish, mean, and miserly soul. You miss the valleys of shadow; but you also miss the heights of transfiguration. You save your life; but you lose it. Suppose that Jeremiah had put away the Heavenly summons, and had lived in the sequestered ease of Anathoth: he might have secured a respectable and peaceable life, but Jehovah would never have spoken to him; the Unseen and Eternal would never have unfolded to his vision; he would never have felt the supreme satisfaction of knowing that he had done his best; he would never have shone like a star amid the darkening clouds of Jerusalem's fall; he would have missed the hero's crown, the Master's "well done," and the exceeding great reward.
And God sent him an ally and comrade. In the heart of the exiles, Ezekiel arose, uttering the same messages, though clothed in the superb imagery of his gorgeous imagination. He too denounced his people's sins; advised them to settle in the land of exile; and spoke of the certain doom of the people and city. In the mouth of these two witnesses every word was established. Like well-attuned instruments, they symphonized, as our Lord said kindred souls must, when they ask concerning some heavenly gift. They were like the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks, standing before the Lord of the earth. They had power with God and man; shutting the heaven, turning the waters into blood, and smiting the earth with a curse. So the beast made war with them, as he always will. Theirs was no easy task; for they were hated by those whom their words tormented. But God has long since called them to his throne, where they stand in the foremost rank of those who, having fulfilled the will of God, have received his welcome and reward.
III. THE NEED OF THIS MINISTRY.-It must be fulfilled with the unconverted.—For lack of it much Gospel effort fails. Of what use are appeals to come to Jesus until the sinner has been led to see the awful peril which he has incurred? Of what avail to extol the balm of Gilead until the soul has heard and accepted the diagnosis of its fatal condition? Of what advantage to offer a seat in the lifeboat, so long as the sailor is full of confidence in his ship, and is unaware of its crazy and unseaworthy condition? One of the most important ministries of the servant of God is to destroy false confidence, to pull down refuges of lies, and to show the utter futility of venturing on the sea of eternity in any other craft than that which Christ launched from the cross of Calvary.
It is a great mistake to heal the wound of the heart too lightly. The consolations of the Gospel are very well; but they must be withheld until men have seen their state before God, and have been held over the mouth of the bottomless pit of their own sin. The greatest revivals always begin in a thorough preaching of the Law, pressing home its demands upon the consciences of the ungodly. Nor is it enough to dwell in general denunciation; we must particularize, till conscience cries, "Thou art the man!"
It must be fulfilled with those who lack assurance. —When men say that they cannot believe, it is probably because they are harbouring some evil thing in their hearts, or are conscious of some unrepaired wrong in their lives. These must be dealt with. There must be the righting, so far as possible, of ancient injuries; the restitution of ill-gotten gains; the seeking of forgiveness; the adjustment of wrong. The fixed purpose to do this, when an opportunity presents itself, will be sufficient to remove the stumbling-block to faith, which will gush out with the sparkle and song of an imprisoned brook. The inability to realize acceptance with God very often points to something that is grieving the Spirit , and at such times the searching ministry of probing and testing and demolition is invaluable.
It must be fulfilled in the higher attainments of the Divine life.—As our obedience grows, our light will grow. And in the growing dawn, we shall become aware of evils that had passed without our notice. The Holy Spirit will lead us to discriminate between the wrong and the right, and reveal what may be hindering us. Then as He destroys one subterfuge after another, ploughs up the fallow ground, disinters the buried secrets, reveals us to ourselves—we may gratefully accept his ministry; which destroys to build, which overthrows to plant, which leads us through the grave, that He may minister eternal life. Nor must we overlook the responsibility of exhorting one another, of urging to repentance, and so much the more as we see the day approaching.