Jeremiah (1-31) 9:3 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Jeremiah (1-31) 9:3

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They are ready to use their tongues like bows which fire arrows. Remember he is speaking about the priestly village. They prepare their vicious remarks and their lies, and fire them off, watching to see whether they accomplish their evil intent. Their tongue is like a weapon. They have a target in mind, and they know that if the lie is skilfully enough constructed, they will hit the target, and it will cause certain things to happen for their advantage, or hide certain things that need to be kept out of sight. It is all carefully thought out. It was an act of deception to devise that target in the first place. ‘But they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth’, which means something like this: their efforts, their desire for victory, is for wrongdoing, not for the truth. Our translators have chosen the word valiant, which isn't represented in the original, but it gets this whole idea across. You think of warriors, of soldiers, who are valiant for a cause in a particular battle. But in this case, although there is a battle, these men are fighting to promote idolatry and the things that the Lord hates, not the truth upon the earth. ‘For they proceed from evil to evil,’ – they go from sin to sin, harm to harm – ‘and they know not me, saith the LORD.’ There is no desire for me; there is no obedience to me; there is no knowledge of my commands and desires, no love, no experience of me, no prayer to me. So the wretchedness of society at the time is described. This is what makes Jeremiah want to get away to a solitary place. He loves the Lord and he loves the ways of peace, and it is deeply troubling to him to be in the presence of men who are lacking in all godly sensitivities. And yet for all that, there is that first verse: ‘Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears.’ So here is Jeremiah’s anguish: we need sympathy for lost people, for people who are certainly perishing unless the Lord intervenes. It is their own fault, just as it was our own fault that we were lost, but the Lord intervened. Sympathy will be the foundation of all effort to reach out. No sympathy, no outreach, or no vigorous outreach, no earnest prayer, no real movement. ‘Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour will walk with slanders.’ This is the deterioration of society, of idolatrous society, in those days, and even mutual respect and love had been undermined. No society can flourish where falsehood has become the norm, and trust is impossible. There are so many interactions that rely on trust is society is to function. How cumbersome society becomes where trust is impossible and every assertion has to be verified. How can there be any deep friendship where trust is missing?‘They will deceive every one his neighbour,’ – presumably in trade – ‘and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies,’ to actually prepare to lie, to know how you are going to defraud someone. That was the society that Jeremiah speaks of. ‘And weary themselves to commit iniquity’ – so numerous are their plans to cheat and to defraud, that they get tired doing it. It takes far more effort to try to lie consistently than simply to speak truth.‘Thine habitation’ – God seems to intervene in his mind – ‘is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know me, saith the LORD.⁷ Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, I will melt them, and try them; for how shall I do for the daughter of my people?’ This seventh verse is very helpful to us. ‘I will melt them and try them.’ The thought here is that the trial that is going to come, the Chaldean invasion, can be pictured as a giant furnace, and like metal in a furnace the entire population is going to be melted down in order that any pure metal, which is within that mass, may be floated and extracted. ‘I will melt them and try [test] them’ – the assayer’s testing. So this is a picture in prophecy of the sifting that will take place through the captivity, and through the punishment meted out, and God will draw out a remnant. Of course, the remnant will not necessarily be truly spiritual. When at the end of the time of captivity, a minority of the people returned to Judah and Jerusalem, they were still a typical people, but they were those who were willing to return. There was a better remnant. ‘I will melt them and try them’; Jeremiah is, piecemeal through these chapters, given prophecies about the return. ‘Their tongue is as an arrow shot out; it speaketh deceit: one speaketh peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in heart he layeth his wait.’ This verse exposes the pretence that accompanies the false speaking that abounds. Nothing can be taken at face value. Who does not look for honest integrity in someone he wants to befriend, to get close to? He wants to know the real person, not some make-believe substitute. The mouth has become detached from the heart, and it is a deliberate technique to hide what is really going on within. Everyone is pretending to be something they are not. Once this becomes widespread in a society, its collapse is inevitable.‘Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?’ The Lord observes all nations, all peoples, but judgment starts with the house of God. They have less excuse than anyone else for going astray. He hates insincerity and lack of genuineness and deliberate guile. God constructed man upright, so that when he opens his mouth he speaks what is really in his heart. That is part of the image of God in man. Christ, the Word, gives a true revelation of God, and man was made to operate in the same way. How careful we must be with every word we speak: not to make excuses, not to exaggerate, not to use words to make a good impression, not to let a gap grow between our words and our deeds,

Application

Now sometimes Reformed people, Calvinistic people, are regarded by Armenian people as ‘cold Calvinists’ or ‘careless Calvinists’. The term is even used occasionally ‘callous Calvinists’. And there certainly is, among some Reformed people, a curious coldness and indifference towards the state of the lost. Never let us drift into that, not even for a moment, or else it will capture us. We have to work on this. You have to reflect upon our own salvation, and the fact that there were certain people instrumental. We may know the names of some people who particularly prayed for us, and were burdened for us, and were sympathetic towards us. We have to pray for sympathy and concern, even though we may be forced to share the views of Jeremiah that some of the those who we are amidst are all lost, hardened, wilful, and so indifferent.

Like Jeremiah we need realism. The problem is sin, and we are trying to minister and pray for people to come under conviction and to repent. It is so vital to bear this in mind. You notice that there are an awful lot of ministries that are designed to minister to hurts: friendship ministry, small meeting ministries, inviting people into the home. These are very fashionable now. Having people into the home is not a bad thing, of course, but this is what some want us to concentrate on. The conviviality of the home setting can send the wrong message. It is all smiles, and warmth, and kindness, and friendliness, and tea and coffee and cakes and meals. There are so many books being written in support of different forms of friendship evangelism. Nice chats, pleasant evenings, lots of jokes, lots of happiness and entertaining. There is surely a place for all these things – but what we are learning in the pages of Jeremiah, and indeed throughout the Scripture, is that ministry for Christ is a serious business. We have to be realistic. There is the problem of sin. The thesis that people’s souls can be won, simply by being very kind to them, very nice to them – and certainly we should be nasty to anybody; but the idea people can be won spiritually simply by kindness and pleasantness, and jokes and convivial times, and cheese and wine and all this type of thing: this is preposterous. This is a matter of bringing people by the work of the Spirit under conviction. Of course we are the kind to people. Of course we are warm and friendly to them, but there is something unique about preaching. It is dealing with serious things. It is designed by God to be a vehicle through which people can be brought under conviction, without personal offence. That is why preaching in churches is so important. This has been the way that God has ordained, and we should keep it, believing in the primacy of preaching as our forebears did. But now it is being pushed out. The idea is: preaching is no good. Instead we need nice little warm chats. Church is hopeless; it's outdated; it's finished. That just puts people off; that just scares people.

This is what the Seeker Sensitive Movement was all about: don't say anything that will offend people. Do your utmost not to talk about sin. Instead deliver sinless, convictionless addresses. It has all got to be friendly, what people want. If they don’t what to worshipper, they don't have to worship. They don't have to join in any of the singing, any of the praise, if they don't want to. A questionnaire was put out, saying, ‘if you came to church, what would you want church to be? What would you want it to be like?’ And of course the general public answered in terms that said, ‘Well we want it to be as little like church as possible. We don't like church; we don't want church.’ ‘All right, we will give you a church which is as little like church as possible, and we won't mention sin and repentance and salvation.’ This in effect is trying to get people in by deceit really, and trick them into getting to like us. But we won't call a spade a spade, and we won't be direct with them. But in the pages of Jeremiah you learn that ministry is a serious business. While Jeremiah feels for people, he has got spiritual realism. This is a matter of bringing people to repent of sin, and that's a vital part.

The long-term fulfilment of verse 7 is in the New Testament age, the gospel age, where we see this periodically taking place. We see times in history of great blessing. In Europe, of course, we had the Reformation. And then that tended to subside, and there was a trough, and then there was a fresh renewal of spiritual outpouring and another great blessing, the great teaching age, the great Puritan age, and the age of the confessions. That too subsides and the enemy attacks, and there seems to be a great testing. Then another remnant comes forth, and a resuscitation of spirituality and good, and so it goes on. Right now we are a trough, a time of great declension. Things have declined really from the Victorian peak into the 20^th and the 21^st centuries, and it is so bad today that we think we are in the last age, the final apostasy, and it may well be so. We see things that have never happened before in centuries, and an alternative morality and constant decline. These prophecies are of great comfort to us, because we see the church being tested, and so few seem to stand, and there is so little of real worth, and so little true biblical preaching. Not only preaching and believing, but practice also. We see the ravages of contemporary Christian worship, and such nonsense as this, and sinful digressions everywhere. Nevertheless God will bring out a remnant, and we pray that before the very end there will be another awakening, another revival of some dimension. This is even reflected in this seventh verse: ‘Behold, I will melt them and try them, for how shall I do for the daughter of my people?’ What else can I do?

Questions

Some people interpret it differently. They think the passage means, if my head were a fountain of waters, my tears wouldn't move these lost people. They would just regard me as absurd. What did I have to be so upset about? But it is better to see it as an expression of his great grief.

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Introduction

Jeremiah (1-31) 9:3 Commentary and Bible Study