Chapter 18: Into the Ground, to Die
Chapter 18: Into the Ground, to Die
(JEREMIAH 32)
"All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power,
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour;
The light that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
The music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that He heard it once; we shall hear it by and by."
BROWNING.
WHILST SHUT UP in the court of the prison, perhaps fastened by a chain that restrained his liberty, Jeremiah received a Divine intimation that his uncle would shortly come to him with a request for him to purchase the family property at Anathoth. This greatly startled him; because he had so clear a conviction, which he cherished as Divinely given, of the approaching overthrow of the kingdom, and the consequent desolation of the land. It had been his one incessant message to his people for nearly forty years, that the land must keep her Sabbaths as a judgment for the sins of the people; and now it seemed conflicting and inconsistent to be told to purchase the field at Anathoth, as though it were needed for cultivation The Divine command quite staggered him, and may have made him for a moment question whether there had not been some mistake in the message he had so constantly reiterated in the ears of his people.
He gave, however, no outward sign of his perplexities; but when his uncle's son entered the courtyard with his request, the prophet at once assented to the proposal, and purchased the property for seventeen shekels (about 2 pounds). A similar incident is recorded in Roman history. When Rome was being besieged by Hannibal, the very ground on which he was encamped was put up for auction, and purchased; a proof of the calm confidence that the Romans possessed of the ultimate issue of the conflict.
In addition to this, Jeremiah took care to have the purchase recorded and witnessed with the same elaborate pains as if he were at once to be entering on occupation. Not a single form was omitted or slurred over; and ultimately the two deeds of contract—the one sealed with the more private details of price; the other open, and bearing the signatures of witnesses—were deposited in the charge of Baruch, with the injunction to put them in an earthen vessel, and preserve them. They were probably not opened again until the return from the captivity; but we can well imagine how strong a rush of emotion and confidence must have been inspired, as the men of that day perused the documents.
But Jeremiah was not a sharer in that glad scene. He did as God bade him, though the shadow of a great darkness lay upon his soul, for which he could only find relief, as the Lord on the cross, in recourse to the Father. Indeed, at this point of his life, he resembles the hidden vessel, which contained within it the charter of the nation's deliverance. He was an earthen vessel indeed, but he contained heavenly treasure. He fell into the ground to die, as the seed does, which holds at its heart a principle of life, that can only express itself through death, and can only bless men when its sowing, amid the depression and decay of autumn, has been complete.
I. HOURS OF MIDNIGHT DARKNESS.-It is only in service that anything reaches its fullest life. A bit of iron is condemned to solitude and uselessness till it becomes part of a great machine. A seed of corn, hidden for three thousand years in a mummy case, abides alone, and only learns the motive and glory of existence when, through death, it learns to weave the chemical juices of the earth, and dews, sunbeams, and air, into the fabric of the golden corn. A man who lives a self-contained life, of which the gratification of his own ambition and self-hood is the supreme aim, never drinks the sweets of existence, nor attains his full development. It is only when we live for God, and, in doing so, for man, that we are able to appropriate the rarest blessedness of which our nature is capable, or to unfold into all the proportions of full growth in Christ. In the deepest sense, therefore, Jeremiah could never regret that he had given the strength and measure of his days to the service of others. If he had not done so, but had shrunk back from the high calling of his early life, his misery would have been in proportion to the royal quality of his nature, and his power to enrich the life of man.
But none can give themselves to the service of others, except at bitter cost of much that this world holds dear. In, the words of Christ, the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die, if it is to bear much fruit. In the case of the wheat-corn, death is necessary to break up the case in which the principle of life lies imprisoned. And in the case of every true life, there must be death to the attractions and indulgences of the self-life, that the soul, being at leisure from itself, may go forth to seek its supplies from God, and to weave them into nourishing food for the lives of those around. This will explain the privations and sorrows to which Jeremiah was subjected. Death wrought in him, that life might work in Israel, and in all who should read the book of his prophecy.
He died to the dear ties of human love.— "Thou shalt not take thee a wife, neither shalt thou have sons or daughters in this place," was early said to him. The men of Anathoth, of the house of his father, conspired against him. The friends with whom he took sweet counsel, and in whose company he walked to the house of God, betrayed him. What he held in his heart belonged to the race, and might not be poured forth within the narrower circle of the home, of priestly temple-duty, or of the little village of Anathoth.
He died to the goodwill of his fellows.—None can be indifferent to this. It is easy to do or suffer, when the bark of life is wafted on its way by favouring breezes, or the air thrills with expressions of love and adulation. Then a man is nerved to date to do his best. And a nature as sensitive as Jeremiah's, is peculiarly susceptible to such impressions. But it was his bitter lot to encounter from the first an incessant stream of vituperation and dislike. We have no record of one voice being raised to thank or encourage him. "Woe is me, my mother," he cried sadly, "that thou hast borne me a man of strife and contention to the whole earth. I have not lent on usury, neither have men lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me."
He died to the pride of national patriotism.—No patriot allows himself to despair of his country. However dark the louring storm clouds, and strong the adverse current, he believes that the ship of State will weather the storm. He chokes back words of despondency and depression, lest they should breed dismay. He does not allow his heart to harbour the thoughts of despair that flit across it, and knock for entrance; he drives them away, and treats them as traitors, guilty of high treason. But Jeremiah was driven along an opposite course. A truer heart than his never beat in human breast. A loftier patriotism than his never hazarded itself in the last breach. His belief in Israel was part of his belief in God. But he found himself compelled to speak in such a fashion that the princes proposed, not without show or reason, to put him to death, because he weakened the hands of the men of war.
He died to the sweets of personal liberty.—A large portion of his ministry was exerted from the precincts of a prison. Repeatedly we read of his being shut up, and not able to go forth. His friend, Baruch, had constantly to act as his intermediary and interpreter. This, too, must have been bitter to him. His writings abound with references to nature, and to natural processes; and the iron fetters of restraint must have eaten deeply into the tender flesh of his gentle heart.
He died, also, to the meaning he had been wont to place on his own prophecies.—Up to the moment when Jehovah bade him purchase the property of Hanameel, he had never questioned the impending fate of Jerusalem. It was certainly and inevitably to be destroyed by sword, famine, pestilence, and fire. All that he had ever said in private or public was but the fresh assertion of this bitter fate, with some new touch of pathos, or turn of emphasis. But now, the word of God, demanding an act of obedience, seemed to indicate that the land was to remain under the cultivation of the families that owned it.
II. JEREMIAH'S BEHAVIOUR.-TO very few men has it been given so closely to walk along the path which the Redeemer trod during his early life. He was stripped of almost everything that men prize most. But amid it all, he derived solace and support in three main directions.
(1) He prayed.—Take this extract from his own diary: "Now, after I had delivered the deed of the purchase unto Baruch, the son of Neriah, I prayed unto the Lord, saying, Ah, Lord God!" Yea, and he was encouraged in this holy exercise; for shortly after this incident, when tidings came to him that the houses of the kings of Judah were being broken down to provide materials for the building of an inner line of defence, behind the shell of wall which was nearly demolished by the terrible battering-rams, and when his heart was more than ever dismayed, the word of the Lord came to him, saying: "Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and will show thee great and secret [or inaccessible] things, which thou knowest not" (xxxiii. 1-5).
There is no help to the troubled soul like that which comes through prayer. You may have no clear vision of God. You may be only able to grope your way in the direction where He sits, enshrouded from your view in the thick darkness. You may be able to do little more than recite things which God and you know perfectly well; ending your prayer, as Jeremiah did, with the words, "and behold Thou seest it" (24). Nevertheless, pray; pray on your knees; "in everything, by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known unto God"; and the peace of God will settle down on, and enwrap, your weary, troubled soul.
He rested on the Word of God.—The soul of the prophet was nourished and fed by the Divine word. "Thy words were found," he cries, "and I did eat them: and thy words were unto me the joy and the rejoicing of my heart." It sounds but hard and cold advice to bid a man in sorrow to read his Bible; but it were impossible to give better. Because, behind the words is the Word; in this garden the Son of Man walks; in this tabernacle the Sun shines in whose beams are health and comfort. How often have God's people turned to the Bible, as the Saviour did in the darkest hours that swept over his soul, and found in a psalm or a chapter the balm of Gilead, the tree of life with healing leaves!
He faithfully kept to the path of duty.— "And I bought the field." It does not always happen that our service to men will be met by rebuff, and hard treatment; but when it does, there should be no swerving, or flinching, or drawing back. God's sun shines on the evil as well as the good, and his rain descends on the fields of the thankless churl equally as on those of His children.
The fierce snow-laden blast, driving straight in your teeth, is not so pleasant as the breath of summer, laden with the scent of the heather; but if you can see the track, you must follow it. To be anywhere off it, either right or left, would be dangerous in the extreme. And often when the lonely soul has reaped nothing but obloquy and opposition, has been borne to a cross, and crucified as a malefactor, it has comforted itself with the prospects of the harvests of blessing which were to accrue to those who had rejected its appeals; just as Pentecost came to those who had been the murderers of Christ.
Such are the resorts of the soul in its seasons of anguish. It casts itself on the ground crying, "Father, Abba, Father"; it stays itself on the word of promise that comes to it in angel-garb; it goes forth to yield itself to death, assured that life awaits it and the objects of its choice.
III. COMPENSATIONS.—To all valleys there are mountains, to all depths heights; for all midnight hours there are hours of sunrise; for Gethsemane, an Olivet. We can never give up aught for God or man, without discovering that at the moment of surrender He begins to repay as He foretold to the prophet: "For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron." We do not make the surrender with any thought of profiting by it; but when we make it, with a single purpose and aim, we learn that when Christ lays a requisition on boat or sailor's time, He returns the boat laden with fish to the water's edge.
Nor does God keep these compensations for that new world, "where light and darkness fuse." It were long to wait, if that were so. But here and now we learn that there are compensations. It may seem a hardship to the man to leave his cell, where he has been immured so long that he dreads the light, the stare of strange eyes, the call for exertion; but when the first stiffness of the joints, and novelty of his surroundings have passed off, will he not be compensated? The first movement from the selfish life may strain and try us, the indifference of our fellows be hard to bear; but God has such things to reveal and give, as pass the wildest imaginings of the self-centred soul.
So Jeremiah found it. His compensations came. God became his Comforter, and wiped away his tears; and opened to him the vista of the future, down whose long aisles he beheld his people planted again in their own land. He saw men buying fields for money, and subscribing deeds and sealing them, as he had done; he heard the voice of joy and the voice of gladness; the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride; the voice of them that bring the sacrifices of joy into the Lord's house; he was assured of the advent of the Man, the branch from the root of David, who should sit upon his throne (xxxii., xxxiii.). There was compensation also in the confidence with which Nebuchadnezzar treated him, and in the evident reliance which his decimated people placed in his intercessions, as we shall see. And if he could only know of the myriads who had been comforted by the story of his griefs, and by the assurances of his prophecies—ruddy juice pressed into the golden chalice of Scripture by the sorrows that crushed his heart—surely he would feel that his affliction was light, and not worthy to be compared with the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory which it was working out.
So it will be with all who fall into the ground to die, God will not forget or forsake them. The grave may be dark and deep, the winter long, the frost keen and penetrating; but spring will come, and the stone be rolled away; and the golden stalk shall wave in the sunshine, bearing its crown of fruit; and men shall thrive on the bread of our experience, the product of our tears, and sufferings, and prayers.