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Chapter xiii., bringing to mind how God had bound Israel to His heart, announces the terrible judgment with which the people shall, as it were, be drunken; and on the ground of this judgment calls them to repentance. The xiv. chap. refers to a famine which took place in the land. The desolation of Jerusalem by the sword and by famine, is again declared. But observe here the touching intercession of ver.7-9; and again in ver. 17-22, the deep affliction of the Spirit of Christ which expresses itself by the prophet's mouth. "For in all their affliction He was afflicted." Observe also another element of their condition pointed out by the Apostle Peter, and by the Lord himself, with reference to the last days, namely, false prophets.

The beginning of chap. xv. is an answer to the close of chap. xiv.; but the instruction and the principles it contains are very remarkable. The Lord declares that if Moses and Samuel (whose love for Israel and faith in intercession for them, were unequalled among all the servants of God who had stood before Him on their behalf), if these two beloved leaders of the people were there, yet God would not accept Israel. Who should have pity on them! The Lord himself forsakes them. From ver. 20 we find the true position of the remnant in such a case. A most touching instruction for ourselves. Poor Jeremiah complains of his lot, among a people whose sorrows he bore on his heart, while at the same time enduring their causeless hatred. We see, ver. 11-14, that he represents the people before God, but yet that the faithful remnant are separated from the mass of the wicked. From ver. 15, they present themselves in this separated position to God, bearing, at the same time, all the pain of the nation's wound, even while asking vengeance on the wicked, the adversaries of the truth. In reply, precise directions are given for

is to say, those nations which occupy Israel's territory; and Babylon which had absorbed and taken the place of all the others, and which must disappear by the judgment of God, to give them their place again.

Compare xlvi. and the following chapters.

the walk of one who is faithful in such a position. The word of God, eaten and digested in the heart, is the source of this position, ver. 16. Instead of sharing the spirit of the enemies and the mockers, who rejoiced in the abominable and hypocritical state of those who bore the name of God's people, the effect of the word in the heart was, no doubt, to separate from this condition of the people, but to isolate, as though he were himself the object of God's indignation, as being himself the people. The word, which revealed the relationship between God and the people, and showed them their privileges and their duties, caused the faithful to judge the state of the people, and to feel all the consequences of this state as the judgment of the Lord. A judgment so much the more terrible to his heart, from his feeling how close a bond of affection and blessing from God, was the normal condition of the people. Vers. 17,18," Thou hast filled me with indignation," is the prophet's language. In vers. 19-21, the precise instructions of God with respect to this condition, are given. God also addresses Jeremiah as though he were the people whom he thus represented in spirit before Him, and at the same time, according to his individual faith. He says, first of all, "If thou return to me, I will bring thee again and thou shalt stand before me.' This open door-open till man shuts it is always in the ways of God, although He well knows that man will not profit by it. Is this all, while it is called to-day and the door is open, to call on the rebellious people to return? No. There is something else for the faithful to do. "If thou separate the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth." In the midst of the ruin caused by the rebellion of God's people, this is the especial work of one who is faithful, who is imbued with the Word. The desire of his soul being the reproduction of this Word and of the affections of God revealed in it, can he reject the people in a mass as wicked? That cannot be. Can he accept them in a condition of rebellion, which is so much the worse. because they belong to God? He must learn to do that which God does, take account of all that is good, and if it is too late to preserve everything, never condemn that

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which is of God. The penetrating eye of God never loses sight of this. The affections of the prophet are fixed upon it also. But God has His own thoughts, and He acts according to His own will; He lays hold of that which is precious, owns it, and separates it from that which is vile. This is not precisely the judgment of God respecting evil, but when the judgment is imminent on account of the evil, the energy of the Spirit and the power of the Word lead us to attach ourselves to the good, to discern it, to separate it from the evil, before the judgment comes. If Satan can, he will mingle them together. Those who know how to separate them shall be as the mouth of God. God will do it in judgment by smiting the evil; in the faithful the spirit of God does it, by separating the precious from the vile. The third principle is, that when once separated from the path of the rebellious by this spiritual intelligence, there must not be a moment's thought of returning to them. "Let them return unto thee, but return not thou unto them." Finally, in this position the Lord will make the faithful like a wall of brass. The rebels, who boast of being called the people of God, fight against His faithful servant, but shall not prevail, because the Lord is with him. Deliverance is promised to Jeremiah. All this, while having its immediate application to the prophet, is most valuable instruction for us, in the principle which it contains to direct us in similar times. Patience is required, but the path is clearly marked out. There is always an open door on God's part. The separation of the precious from the vile makes us like the mouth of God. A positive refusal when thus placed to return to the unfaithful. Such are the principles that God has here established. The Word received in the heart is their source. At the same time, the effect is very far from contempt of the fallen people; on the contrary, the heart of the faithful takes upon itself all the grief of the position in which the people of God, or those who publicly stand as such, are found.

In chap. xvi. the Lord teaches Jeremiah to avoid all family relationships with this people, and to cease from

all testimonies of interest in what was going on among them. For He himself had entirely broken off with them, and would cause all His testimonies to cease among them, and would drive them out of the land. But after all, through the greatness of the evil which He would bring upon them, He would cause their deliverance out of Egypt to be forgotten in their yet greater deliverance from this evil. For at length God will pardon and comfort His people. But before this He will recompense their iniquity. Afterwards, the Gentiles themselves shall come and acknowledge the true God, the God of Israel.

Chap. xvii. The great thing amidst all that was going on, was to trust in the Lord. He who, failing in this, made flesh his arm, should not see when good came. Meantime, the fire of God's anger was kindled, and should not be quenched. How could a wicked and deceitful heart be trusted! The Lord searches it, to give every one according to his ways. The prophet, in the name of the people, casts himself upon the Lord; and on account of the wickedness of the adversaries who mocked at God's testimonies, he appeals to God. He had not desired the woeful day which he announced, neither was it by his own choice that he forsook the peaceful duties he owed the people to follow God in this testimony. He entreats God, whose terrible judgments were to scatter the people, not to be a terror unto him. God was all his hope in the day of evil. What a picture of the condition of the remnant in the last days; and, at all times, of the portion of one who is faithful, when the people of God will not hearken to his testimony! Nevertheless, it being still called to-day, God, in His long-suffering, opens the door of repentance to the people, and to their king, if they have ears to hear. In chap. xviii. this principle is fully demonstrated before the people (verses 1-10). But the people, in despair as to God, in the midst of their boldness in evil, and in contempt of His marvellous patience, give themselves up to the iniquity by which Satan deprives them of their hope in God. God announces His judgment by the prophet, whose testimony provokes the expression of the confidence felt by a conscience hardened in the certainty and immutability of its privi

leges, and of the blessings attached to the ordinances with which God had endowed His people, and to which He had outwardly attached these blessings, that maintained their relationship with Him. What a dreadful picture of blindness! Ecclesiastical influence is always greatest at the moment when the conscience is hardened against the testimony of God; because unbelief, which trembles after all, shelters itself behind the presumed stability of that which God had set up, and makes a wall of its apostate forms against the God whom they hide; attributing to these ordinances the stability of God himself. Conscience says too much to allow the unbeliever any hope of standing well with God, even when God opens His heart to him. "There is no hope," he says;

"I will continue to do evil; moreover, the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise; nor," he adds (the false prophets having the ear of the people) "the word from the prophet." The warning which this chapter contains, appears to me very solemn. I can scarcely imagine a more terrible picture of the professing people's condition. The prophet asks for judgment upon them. This is in the spirit of the remnant, trodden down by the wickedness of the Lord's enemies.

Chaps. xix. and xx. show us the judgment of Jerusalem, announced in terms that require little explanation; and we have, in chap. xx., a sample of the opposition of the priests, and of Jeremiah's sufferings. But this does not prevent Jeremiah's denouncing the priest himself, and repeating that which he had said of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, we see the effect of these sufferings on his heart. He was compelled, as it were, by the Lord to bear this testimony. He has not (and it is the same with the remnant) the willing spirit that rejoices in tribulation by the power of the Holy Ghost. He was the subject of constant mockery; they watched for his halting, so that he would gladly have been silent; but the word of the Lord was like fire in his bones. Alas! we understand all this-the deep iniquity of the men who are called the people of God, the way in which the feeble heart recoils before this iniquity, that has neither heart nor conscience, and how on these occasions the

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