Jeremiah (1-31) 15:19 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Jeremiah (1-31) 15:19

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The Lord replies and it is a reproof to Jeremiah: ‘Therefore thus saith the LORD, If thou return, then will I bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before me.’ This is not said to the Israelites; it is not to Judah; it is to Jeremiah. ‘If thou return.’ Equally, you could translate that, because it is the very same word, If you repent of this momentary lapse into gloom and almost mistrust, and put your trust in me once again, ‘then I will bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before me.’ ‘And if thou take forth the precious from the vile’ – that describes his own words. We are back to the refining imagery again. Take away the vile words, the doubting words, the despondent words that you utter to me. Take from all your words just the precious ones: the praise and the worship and the earnest, humble prayer. ‘Thou shalt be as my mouth. I will use you and you will be my messenger once again. There is going to be a remnant, and even now there is a remnant out there. If you call out the few in whose hearts there will be a work of grace, then you will be used by the Lord. Be content with this privileged ministry, calling out the few. You are backslidden, Jeremiah. You are away from me to be so despondent. The Lord now speaks of the people: ‘Let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them.’ Here is a tremendous principle. Let the people return unto thee; let them listen to you, and if they ask a question answer it, but don’t join with them. If they say, ‘Jeremiah, we have given you a hard time. We are going to treat you better now. We are going to throw a supper in your honour, and make you one of us. We are going to honour you as a God-sent prophet in our land, so just come with us and we will make amends.’ If they say this, don't go, says the Lord. If they come and listen to you, speak the word of God to them. They are a condemned and a wicked people. Yes, speak to them, but don't recognise them, their lifestyle, what they are doing.We don't want to paint Jeremiah as a weakling or as a complainer or anything like that. We want to encourage the utmost respect for him all the time. If he seems to begin to crack – which he does two or three times – then it is simply evidence to us of how terrible the pressures upon him were, and how great was the hostility. It certainly shouldn't make us think any the less of him.And then God repeats the very same promise that he gave to Jeremiah at his original call: ‘And I will make thee unto this people a fenced brasen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee.’ They seem to prevail momentarily, but not permanently. A bronze wall, as we would translate it today – ‘and they shall fight against thee.’ What is the significance of this bronze wall? Jeremiah is going to be a great obstacle in the land. Here are the people, wanting to carry on with their idolatry up to the highest level, and there is this prophet, this outspoken prophet, who constantly blocks them and reproves them, and appeals to the conscience and warns them, and predicts terrible calamity for them on account of it. So he is like a bronze wall blocking their way, a lone prophet. Surely they can dispose of him. ‘No,’ says the Lord, ‘I will keep you there, and whatever they do, I’ll take you out of dungeons; I’ll set you free from prisons, so that you can still serve as an obstruction to sin, and they will have to go round you.’ ‘But they shall not prevail against thee, for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the Lord.’ So there is a reproof for Jeremiah, and yet a re-appointment and a solemn promise. ‘And I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked,’ – which probably refers to the princes and the leaders of Judah – ‘and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible’, which probably applies to the Babylonian oppressor. So he be delivered both from the enemies within and the enemies without.

Application

This text and many others in the Scripture just the same, announces a solemn principle. You cannot be culturally relevant as some people put it. They say to their churches in their group, ‘You must be culturally relevant.’ But God says, ‘Speak to them, but don't go with them. Answer their questions; respond to them, but don't accept any invitations to do as they do, or to work with them. That is God’s command to Jeremiah: ‘You keep your distance. As far as participation with their lifestyle, their culture, their opinions; you are to be aloof from that entirely.’

Now that is what Bible believing Christians always used to say, until not so long ago, and this was the recognised principle of all churches everywhere. You never heard any of this: ‘be culturally progressive’. That didn't start to come in until the 1970s. Rather, what we heard was: ‘Pray every day; witness every day; follow the Lord; separate from the world. You are in the world, but you are not of it.’ Now it is entirely different. The Scriptural standard for generations and centuries has been cast aside. But the people of God who are faithful and trusting, will be as a brazen wall, and will be held and kept, and will call out the remnant that God has in his elected purpose.

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Jeremiah (1-31) 15:19 Commentary and Bible Study