Jeremiah (1-31) 4:19 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Jeremiah (1-31) 4:19

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‘My bowels’ – My anguish, we might translate that today. My innermost being, he says, is pained at the very heart. ‘My heart maketh a noise in me’, like a heart pounding furiously. ‘I cannot hold my peace’, or we would put it slightly differently, I cannot contain my feelings, ‘because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.’ ‘Destruction upon destruction’, literally, breach upon breach. The KJV has ‘is cried’, in which case the idea is that as they smash down the walls of one defended walled city, they cry out to get the next, or else the defenders cry as the terrible news comes of the fall of another city, another breach in the walls. The Hebrew word can also mean ‘to meet’ or ‘to encounter’ and other versions therefore give a sense such as, ‘Destruction follows destruction.’ ‘For the whole land is spoiled.’ Look at the poetic language at the end of verse 20. ‘Suddenly are my tents spoiled. They didn't live in tents; they had their fine buildings, their bricks and mortar. But the prophet describes all buildings as being as flimsy as tents, when the Chaldeans arrive: so susceptible to destruction. ‘My tents spoiled, and my curtains’, the walls of a tent, ‘in a moment.’ Buildings are just broken down. 'How long shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of the trumpet?’, the standard of the enemy, held up as a rallying point for the troops, and the trumpet of war giving signals in the battle. In that vision, Jeremiah tasted the coming assault on the city, and he was deeply shaken and troubled by it. How long have I got to see this kind of a vision? It is terrible, this vision of a terrible reality? He mourns, and yet he affirms that the Lord has had to do it, and he tells us of the aims he is going to have in preaching to them. Verse 22 is one of the very significant verses, and Jeremiah will keep the contents of this verse in mind in all his preaching. He, as it were, divides his preaching up into departments, and each department represents a sin or a need of the people. Each department is aimed at a particular kind of behaviour or attitude or problem. Here they are in effect summarised: ‘My people is foolish’ – the word here is ‘silly’. They just think foolishly, and he aims many of his illustrations to show these sophisticated, educated people how foolish they are really being. He doesn't insult them so as to put them off, but he uses pictures that will show them this: the foolishness of their attitudes. ‘They have not known me.’ That is another department. They have no spiritual experience. They don't know what it is to know the living God, and to taste him and his goodness, and to relate to him, and prove him. ‘They are sottish children’, which is another kind of foolishness; really it points to wilfulness. They are wilful in their sin. Sin isn’t an accident. ‘And they have none understanding’ – the English is awkward; it isn’t very modern – it means they are ignorant. What widespread ignorance we have today! People know everything about the insignificant aspects of life, and nothing about the deep things of life. ‘They are wise to do evil,’ – all their intelligence goes into the alternative lifestyle they want – ‘but to do good they have no knowledge.’ Morality, they have such a poor understanding of, because only God can give morals. You hear this world and this present culture discussing what is moral, and what is not moral. At the moment, it is the assisted dying bill – the worldling is completely at sea. He can't even begin to reason in this field, because morality is entirely nonsensical unless you have a given morality, given by a Creator, given by God. ‘To do good, they have no knowledge’, no basis for any kind of morality. Those are the different categories that Jeremiah will work to in his preaching.

Application

Lack of spiritual experience was the whole issue for George Whitfield and Charles and John Wesley at the time of the Great Awakening. All the people of England thought they were Christians. Today we are used to a society where people do not think they are Christians, and don't want to be Christians, and are sometimes hostile to Christians, but the early Methodists lived at a time where everybody thought he or she was a Christian. The issue that they faced was how to break down this wall of blindness, and they identified as the missing factor this same point that Jeremiah makes here: ‘They have not known me.’ They have no experience. They think to know about God and about Christ, and about the doctrines, and how to say the catechism is everything. They believe they are on the way to heaven; they can describe themselves as Christian, but they have no experience. They have never felt the power of the new birth. They don't know about that. It's a mystery to them. When Whitfield and the Wesleys began to preach the new birth, people immediately began to call them fanatics – ‘It is going too far to say that religion involves an experience.’ They had hit the nail on the head. That was the way to go, and it is one of the ways we have to go.

When we look through Jeremiah’s arguments and how he lays them out, we see what we too have to do. Without offending people so that they won't listen to us, we have to show people who think they are intellectually very sophisticated, that their whole policy for life is futile, and silly, and ill thought out, and based on nonsensical things.

We see the place of very deep feelings in the lives of believers, regardless of personality, or nationality. Here are Jeremiah’s feelings as a believer for the souls of men. When we are so phlegmatic, we must come here to see what we should be, how we can feel strongly. It is not a matter of false gushiness, which can be thrown up overnight: short flights of emotion and feeling. That sort of feeling evaporates easily; it is more about convincing ourselves than anything else. Jeremiah feels so strongly that it reaches bodily pain. We may experience excitement, a lump in throat, a dry mouth, but with Jeremiah it is a pain in his abdomen. Not that this is the norm. Jeremiah had been able to see the destruction coming as a prophet, and yet nation takes no notice. We can understand him being so moved. Not that we are supposed to be constantly in this state, but God’s servants must be capable of feeling if they are to be used.

In Jeremiah 9:1-2 we read of his weeping for them and yet his longing to get away from them. Is something wrong in this? No, this is the right feeling. He is sickened by the godlessness and arrogance of people, and yet he wishes he had enough feeling to cope with it. This capacity for great feeling characterises all of God’s messengers. We see it in Paul in Romans 9:1-3. It was impossible he could really desire this, but he had a genuine yearning which gets across his feelings to them. We see it in Christ crying for Jerusalem. We can’t expect to be used if we don’t feel. Those most used by God are men of great feeling. Luther felt that he had to speak; men and women needed to be delivered from the darkness of Rome. He faced death and persecution. Today we have freedom, and yet we are asleep on our feet. It wouldn’t cost us anything like what it cost them to reach every home, but we lack the feelings.

Strong feelings are painful; you feel an anxiety to reach people, but you will suffer frustration. People are so determined to oppose God. You will find that you are banging your head against a brick wall. Sometimes we can’t reach people because other believers let us down. The temptation is to give up strong feelings. There is also pain arising from the loss of great pleasure from other things we used to enjoy. We are tempted to have our feelings serving us, and not the Lord. We must guard against avoiding spiritual feeling.

How can we get spiritual feeling? What provokes feelings? Perhaps if Jeremiah was never given this vision, he would not have felt so moved. In seeing what was going to happen to them he realised he should have been with them. If we want to help ourselves to feel then we ought to reflect more on what is happening to us, to those around us. In late teens and early 20s, there are opportunities for witness we will never have again. Many look back and feel how pitiful, how inadequate was their witness at the time. We need to feel strong feelings at the right time. We must get a view of those who are perishing. Not so that we think like Arminians: as if these will go to hell if I do not persuade them well enough. No, if it is not us, then for the elect God will use another. God gives us feeling so that we may be used. They are facing an eternity without Christ. They are taken in by this world. God will have to send them away for all eternity. Think of those who have nice traits. Because we are so tame in our witness, so cowardly, they will not hear. We should begin to be ashamed. We deserve the same fate, and yet we have been delivered. We are saved, is it in order that we should be do-nothing believers? Jeremiah doesn’t see a crowd, but individual people he knows. God will hold us accountable for what we have done among our neighbourhood; we cannot say, they are not my people. They are, according to the flesh. We are to identify, to feel. I was called by God to serve. Feelings come as a result of the plight of the people and feeling of identification.

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Jeremiah (1-31) 4:19 Commentary and Bible Study