Jeremiah 14

Jeremiah 14:22

THE DEADLY DROUGHT Jeremiah 14:22 to Jeremiah 15:21IN the portion of Jeremiah hitherto presented, we have dealt largely in detached texts, selecting and treating the same with a definite objective. Today we undertake, rather, the study of two chapters—the weeping Prophet’s message on “the drought”. Jeremiah is the Prophet of parables. In the thirteenth chapter his parable is the linen girdle. In the fourteenth and fifteenth it is the parable of drought; in the eighteenth and nineteenth the parable of the potter’s house; in the twenty-fourth the parable of the two baskets of figs, etc.This is only another way of saying that Jeremiah was a graphic preacher, and doubtless as dramatic in delivery as vivid in description.Whether this day’s study deals with a drought and consequent famine already existing at the time of the Prophet’s complaint, or whether it is another of those instances of forecasting, with a view to warning, we may not surely determine. The probabilities are that the description is prophetic. God seldom strikes until He has spoken once, twice, thrice. Such is His patience!For 120 years the flood was prophetically impending; but such was God’s compassion toward sinful man that the flood could not fall until his impenitence was proven to be permanent.Among the famines recorded in the Old Testament that took the form of Divine judgment, that of these chapters occupies prominent place.

It was not a mere freak of nature, nor yet the product of undirected natural law. If the text has any meaning, it was Divinely sent and represented just judgment.The perusal of the two chapters will seem the more significant if we will permit our thoughts to circulate about The Deadly Drought; The Divine Wrath; and The Personal Redemption.THE DEADLY DROUGHT It was such as to anguish the souls of men. The Scripture says,“The Word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah concerning the dearth. “Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof languish; they are black unto the ground; and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up”. Possibly, of all the afflictions that befall man, none is to be so much dreaded as drought and famine. In war, men are mangled and suffer in consequence, but a flesh wound is only painful for a few hours, when either the healing processes of nature calms it, or nature’s disintegration deadens it altogether.The pestilence sometimes sweeps the earth, but as a rule, a few days of sickness from such source and the patient is either on the way to recovery or is unconscious, or dead.An earthquake adds to physical injuries, shattered nerves; but a few minutes and the quake is over, and even its victims, if living, begin to grow calm and entertain hope.The flood is the outstanding instance of Divine judgment upon a race so far as its extent is concerned; and yet, the flood was comparatively merciful. The nerve-racking of rising waters must have been great and terrible, but drowning itself is scientifically conceded to be almost the easiest of all conceivable deaths.Famine, however, is far and away—the slowest, the most anguishing, and by far the most physically painful of all enemies to mind and body. Its work is not done in a day; but days lengthen to weeks and weeks to months before the end comes. It does not affect the mind only, as the average earthquake; nor yet the body, as the average pestilence; but it involves both mind and body in an unthinkable agony. How meaning-full the phrase, “Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof languish; they are black unto the ground; and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up”.When the late war began, famine was the thing most feared by the combatants, and against its possible occurrence they made the most careful provision.The mercy of God doubtless expressed itself in separating the continents and leaving the seas united.

It is because the prospered people of the earth, such as dwell in the greater portions of Europe, the English Isles, and in North America, are separated by long distances from the sight of the starving, dying thousands of East Indians, Africans and Chinese, that we can retain our complacency and indulge our pleasures.Even the newspaper report of these things, without any vision of them, or any real comprehension of their dreadful nature and dire extent, disturbs us no little.Famine is the scourge of all scourges! v It reaches even to the souls of men.This famine involved alike the bodies of men and of beasts. The text says,“Their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters: they came to the pits, and found no water; they returned with their vessels empty; they were ashamed and confounded, and covered their heads. “Because the ground is chapt, for there was no rain in the earth, the plowmen were ashamed, they covered their heads. “Yea, the hind also calved in the field, and forsook it, because there was no grass. “And the wild asses did stand in the high places, they snuffed up the wind like dragons; their eyes did fail, because there was no grass” (Jeremiah 14:3-6). What a graphic and agonizing picture! Drought is no respecter of persons. When it comes the nobles and their children are not exempt. We can have economic reversals such as exist now, and while the poor and the unemployed suffer, the nobles of the land—those who hold its offices and handle its wealth, are untouched; in fact, any well-informed man knows that this present panic has put, and will again put, millions on millions into the pockets of the prospered. The stocks that some of you bought two and three years ago at enormously inflated prices, these prospered ones sold to you and took their profit; and now that the bottom is gone from the stock market, they are buying them back for a song, to shortly start them on another rise for the new crop of speculators.The land, at the present moment, is pauperized in the midst of plenty. God’s rains have not failed!

The brooks are running; the springs are active; the pits hold water; the land is enormously fruitful.If there ever was a judgment upon the nations that was self-inflicted and for which God had no responsibility whatever, the present is an instance. Greed, and not God, is back of the world’s economic debacle—greed that brought on war, costing the nations billions on billions,—greed, that voiced itself in needless luxuries in which men indulged for more than a decade,—greed that conceived false inflations and found sufficient suckers to keep those inflations afloat for awhile,—greed, that led the Florida agent to ask $10,000 for a lot that was worth less than one, and secure it for a time, only to find that when the false bottom fell out, the promoter himself commonly perished.The Atheistic Association last autumn implored President Hoover not to declare a Day of Thanksgiving, assigning, as their reason, the unemployment, poverty, grasshoppers and drought scourges that were on our land.

How contemptible their basis! There never was a land that “flowed with milk and honey” as America has done! Its grain-fields are so great that the hunger of the world can’t consume their surplus; its potato patches so fruitful that thousands of bushels are left to rot, there being no market for them; its citrus fruits so enormous that one, who cared to do it, could drive his empty wagon into the orchards of California or Florida and the owners would say, “Fill, the same with the falling fruits, and there is no charge!” Our sheep and our cattle are so reproductive that 2¢ per pound is the price of mutton on foot and 4¢ to 8¢ of steak.Our banks, while they are closing out farmers on what they call frozen assets, and are calling upon every patron to either pay up or provide collateral, far in excess of the endangered credit, are yet the depositories of millions in gold.If there ever was an occasion of thanksgiving to God for His goodness to man, the average American has it; and if there ever existed occasion for suspicion of his fellows who seek advantage of their kind, that suspicion exists now!Could a greater contrast be conceived than that of life in America at this moment, and that described as existing in Judea in the days of the drought.Our nobles do not send their little ones for water; it is brought to them by a servant on a silver platter. The ground with us is not chapt; it is teeming with fruitfulness instead. The deer of this land is not driven to the unnatural act of leaving its fawn behind because she has no food for the same, but grazes on green pastures instead; and whereas the wild asses of Judah sought the mountain top, snuffed up the wind, hoping to get moisture out of the same since there was neither water nor grass upon which to feed, the wild and domestic animals of America fill themselves daily with both.Yes, there will be occasion for President Hoover to do two things this Autumn. First, to argue with his prospered fellows against their godless greed; and second, to appoint a Day of Thanksgiving to the Almighty God who hath remembered our land in such unstinted measure.This famine forced a full confession of sin and shame. The Prophet voiced it for the people:“O Lord, though our iniquities testify against us, do Thou it for Thy Name’s sake: for our backslidings are many; we have sinned against Thee. “O the hope of Israel, the saviour thereof in time of trouble, why shouldest Thou be as a stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man that turneth aside to tarry for a night? “Why shouldest Thou be as a man astonied, as a mighty man that cannot save? Yet Thou, O Lord, art in the midst of us, and we are called by Thy Name; leave us not. “Thus saith the Lord unto this people, Thus have they loved to wander, they have not refrained their feet, therefore the Lord doth not accept them; He will now remember their iniquity, and visit their sins” (Jeremiah 14:7-10). There are some striking sentences in this confession. They reveal the Prophet’s keen sense of the basic trouble, and at the same time they show very clearly the spiritual deadness and utter indifference of the people in general.Jeremiah is unable to ask God’s mercy on the ground of the people’s penitence. He knows that it does not exist. “Our iniquities testify against us” was a true confession, but the people did not join with the Prophet in making it. “Our backslidings are many”, “We have sinned against Thee” were both true sentences, but when Jeremiah utters them, there is no Amen from the Israel gallery, nor even from the front rows in Judah!Have you not noted that on that account Jeremiah does not plead the merit of the people, or even their claim for mercy. He rests his whole prayer in the character and custom of God. “Do Thou it for Thy Name’s sake”.“O the hope of Israel, the saviour thereof in time of trouble”. But, even while he is about pleading God’s character and trusting that, in spite of his people’s sins, God will show His compassion, he practically confesses that they put God wholly out of their lives by adding, “Why shouldest Thou be as a stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man that turneth aside to tarry for a night”?How significant those words! God, a stranger in the midst of His own people; God, a wayfarer in His own land!

Why? There can be but one answer; because the people have forgotten God and become estranged from Him.

Why? “as a wayfaring man”, because they have not made Him welcome in their homes. They have ceased to have family devotions; they have ceased to engage in private prayer; they have not acknowledged Him at the table as they sat down to consume what He Himself had provided. They have turned Him out of His own house.The Prophet cried, “O Lord, * * we are called by Thy Name; leave us not”, as if God, like an indifferent father was walking off from His family in their day of trouble and of darkness, instead of the actual case—the family having flung the Father out, having practically told Him to his face, “We will not have You to rule over us, nor will we entertain You under our roofs.” That is why God answered, “They loved to wander, they have not refrained their feet, therefore the Lord doth not accept them; He will now remember their iniquity, and visit their sins”.Men are daily speculating on what the future holds for America. One writer says that “the darkness will deepen; the depression will increase, the unemployment will grow; the poor will suffer increasingly, the prospect is black!” Another one says, “the day brightens; tomorrow will bring us back to the high financial tide of yesterday, and the day after will reveal a world in abundance beyond that any century has ever seen,” and the public reads the two opinions and wonders which will prove to be the prophet—Pessimist as they call him, or the Optimist as they name him!Hear me! The future is not with the prophet; still less with the philosopher.H. G.

Wells has no more ground of promise for the days that are ahead than he had for his unwarranted and false history of the past. The future is with God, and if the people repent of their sins and God returns, prosperity will be their portion, and if they continue to plunge more deeply into the mire of lawlessness, sensual excesses, blind-pigging, racketeering, banditry, kidnapping and multiplied murders, then the future will see the days turned into nights, plenty into poverty, and peace into war; and the very earth that is robed in autumnal beauty this morning will come to wear the black veil of mourning, and the widow-weeds of a deserted world, for the world is increasingly rejecting God.

Is it any wonder that it is set for the experience ofTHE DIVINE WRATHTurn again to the text, “Then said the Lord unto me, Pray not for this people for their good”.That is a strange statement, and yet, upon further study it will prove to be a very significant statement. Mercy is not always for the good of people. Sometimes judgment and judgment alone can bring them to blessing, and God so loves man that He will do the thing that is for man’s good rather than the thing that even His Prophet pleads.Crucifixion even was the Salvation of Barabbas! Minnesota does not provide for capital punishment, and many a criminal is cursed by that soft sentimentality. How much better it would have been for the two yeggmen, killed in their endeavor to rob the Menominie, Wis. bank last week, if they had been shown no such mercy as escape from both prison and gallows. Their innocent victims would then have lived and they themselves had time and occasion to repent ere death came.

Man’s good is not always accomplished by mercy. If it were prisons would be dispensed with and the gallows ended.

There are times when justice is for the good of the judged. That is the whole basis upon which law enforcement rests. We are anxious to do more than protect society against criminals; we are anxious to protect the criminal against himself! Hence the Reformatory, the prison house, and if need be, the electric chair.This judgment then, was not to be turned away by intercessory prayer.“Pray not for this people for their good. “When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and an oblation, I will not accept them: but I will consume them by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence”. Mark you, this is not a passage that opposes, at any point, God’s promises of compassion to the penitent! These people were not penitent; they were in no sense sensible of their sins; they had seared their consciences; they had filled their ears with cotton; they had hardened their hearts; they had deliberately rejected God and made permanent choice of sin’s highway.Intercessory prayer is a mighty power. God has made many promises to it; and again and again He has marvelously fulfilled the same. But there are times and conditions under which God does not wish to hear the intercessory prayer voiced: because He grieves alike to reject the plea of a true man, and, yet, knows the folly of forgiving and further favoring the impenitent.With the growth of crime in this country, involving as it does hundreds and thousands, yea even tens of thousands of boys, the text is finding multiplied illustrations. The parents and friends of these boys always feel that their sins ought to be forgiven and that the State ought to show compassion; that the prison term ought to be cut short; that the criminal ought to be given another chance, and given it straight away.They forget that oftentimes that course would not be good for the criminal himself. If the boy who snatched the purse from the hand of some woman as she walked by the mouth of the black alley last month was caught, convicted of his crime and put behind the bars, was pardoned out the next month, he would naturally reason, “Well, if I get in again I will get out.

A few months off duty, with fair board, is not so bad. Next time I’ll engage in a holdup and get a bigger amount, so that if I escape entirely I will profit more; if I am apprehended I will trust the friends on the outside to intercede again in my behalf.”In my office as pastor, there are scores of mothers that have come to me from time to time asking that my influence be used to secure the release of a convicted child.

My heart is touched to pity for them. I know full well how deep is their sorrow, how great their chagrin. But a proper judgment for sin is, in the end, a panacea for the same. Criminality in Minnesota increases because there is no proper judgment for the vilest, bloodiest murderer; no gallows, no electric chair faces him no matter how infamous, brutal or inhuman his murderous crime.Shallow thinking has so far pushed the act of compassion that if those brutes, in the form of men who during the past week robbed a neighboring bank of $130,000, shot through the shoulder one of the banker’s sons because he could not meet their demands, and murdered in cold blood his younger brother as a reprisal against those who attempted to thwart their escape, had done their dastardly deed in Minnesota, the utmost justice that could be meted out to them would be a temporary residence in a walled enclosure with fair board for the rest of life.There are people who think that God ought to be either a compassionate, motherly woman, or a dear old daddy who would look with complacency upon anything that spoiled children might care to accomplish. As for me, I prefer that God that speaks to Jeremiah; that God who believes that certain sins ought to come to judgment; and who, when crime demands it, will not hesitate to end the same by sword or famine or pestilence.This wrath was not to be escaped, either, through lying prophets. Pleading the cause of his people, Jeremiah said:“Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, the prophets say unto them, Ye shall not see the sword, neither shall ye have famine; but I will give you assured peace in this place. “Then the Lord said unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in My Name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart. “Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets that prophesy in My Name, and I sent them not, yet they say, Sword and famine shall not be in this land; By sword and famine shall those prophets be consumed. “And the people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sward; and they shall have none to bury them, them, their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters: for I will pour their wickedness upon them” (Jeremiah 14:13-16). If God forgave all the people that follow false prophets the world would be nothing but a holocaust of crime. A man is not excused from sin because he has believed the lying speech of a sanctimonious pretender, or a polished philosopher. A few years ago false prophets said:“This war is one of the world’s growing pains, and in the law of evolution, such is to be expected. It will result in making the world safe for democracy. While it is on, prices will be better and when it is over, more valuable lessons will have been learned; human life will have been lifted to a higher plane and the law of evolution will have a fresh demonstration in an improved species of man.”There were plenty of foolish people who believed that philosophy and today they are seeing the fruits of their folly. The growing pains do not pass; but deepen rather.

Evolution did not take place; but devolution instead. The improvement promised did not come; but a moral pandemonium.Now we have a new crop of prophets and the very same fellows who saw in war the world’s forward step are pleading for peace as the promise of all possible good, the precursor of the prophetic millennium.Again they are calling their crowd; and there are hundreds of people, yea thousands and millions of them, who imagine that the World Court, and the Hague Council, or the International League will prove the panacea for international ills.What nonsense!

The prophetic Word of God stands fast and the prophet of world-improvement by war or peace was not sent of God; neither has He commanded them; neither spake He unto them.“They prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their hearts” and God answers, “By sword and famine shall those prophets be consumed. And the people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword; and they shall have none to bury them, them, their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters: for I will pour their wickedness upon them”. False prophets, who cry “Peace! Peace! when there is no peace”; false prophets who call “evil good and good evil;” false prophets who oppose the Divine plan of redemption for the individual and set us a chimerical claim of civilizing a world and saving a race!Dr. Henry Ostrom, speaking before the Northwestern Bible School one morning, said: “The cry of the false prophet has now ceased from the simple endeavor of individual redemption; quit the petty business of trying to snatch the sinning man; “Save the ship” they say!And then Dr. Ostrom asked, “Who will save the ship, and how?”That is a pertinent question.

In 1911 they built an unsinkable ship, and in order to voice its sure strength they called it “The Titanic”. Their boast was that no force of nature could send it to the bottom of the sea; and to demonstrate they forced it through the ice-berg-infested waters of the north at a speed hitherto never attempted.

They would defy nature’s forces; they would prove man’s triumph over the same; they would demonstrate that even the Deity could not now endanger the climax of man’s invention.But the history of that endeavor is written in a thousand burials at sea. When the S.O.S. cry rang out from that sinking ship and the “San Francisco” either failed to catch it, or went about her business believing the danger to be small, and the “Carpathia,” on the faraway waves, turned her prow to assist, “and at the end of hours came along ‘side, did she strive to save the ship? No! Saving that ship was impossible! That ship had defied God and all the forces at His command and the sides had been driven in and if every ocean liner on the sea had been within call their combined endeavors could not have saved the “Titanic”, she was doomed.The “Carpathia” did save several hundred drowning men and women and brought them safely to shore; but the ship itself was wounded unto death. He was a false prophet who thought to staunch her wounds and set her afloat again.In this day at least, the servant of God has an adequate task to which he is clearly committed, namely, to stretch out a hand to the drowning and, if possible, lift him into the life boat; and as those who clung to the “Titanic” went down with her, so those who cling to the world and wait for its redemption, are forever doomed; all the false prophets of the earth can bring them no help.In fact, these false prophets are themselves losing hope, and like the over-confident officers of the “Titanic”, are compelled, whether they will or not, to turn their eyes to those rescuers who have come along side, or sink!Three years ago Harry Emerson Fosdick, the most famed of the new school, gave expression to exactly what I am saying.

His observation compelled his admission. Writing of the liberal preachers—the false prophets of this day, he said:“An increasing number of preachers, too modern to use the old, textual method, do not on that account light on a better one.

They turn to what is called topical preaching. They search contemporary life in general and the newspapers in particular for subjects. They find that such subjects as divorce, Bolshevism, or the latest book have such attractive vividness that they enjoy their own preaching better and more people come to hear it.“The nemesis of such a method, however, is not far off. Watch the records of any considerable number of those who try it and see how many of them peter out and leave the ministry altogether.”The tears even of the true prophet will not avail.“Therefore thou shalt say this word unto them; Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease: for the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach, with a very grievous blow” (Jeremiah 14:17). Beyond all doubt the plea of the true prophet has availed often with God. Beyond all question, his tears are bottled up and his prayer is heard. But there are occasions where no tears are sufficient to effect salvation. How many men have wept over their godless children; how many devoted fathers have bent the knees daily and begged for compassion upon prodigals, and yet the prodigals themselves refused to turn from sin and see the Saviour.We used to have a song that we often sang. It was doubtless intended to teach the true way of salvation, namely, the way of faith vs. works, of penitence vs. penance. It ran like this:“Weeping will not save me, Though my face were bathed in tears That could not allay my fears Could not wash the sins of years Weeping will not save me!” Sobbing cannot save a sinful son, a wilful daughter. Think of David as an illustration of this fact.If ever a father loved a boy, he loved Absalom. And if ever a father prayed for a son he prayed for that lad. But Absalom would not listen to either a father’s counsel or the admonitions of God, and judgment came when his beautiful body, topped by those raven locks, hung between earth and heaven, a corpse,—the victim of his own crime. The report of that judgment sent David to his chamber over the gate, weeping out his soul as he went, saying, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son”!But when a Saviour’s death will not suffice, though a father offer himself willingly in the son’s behalf, it would prove insufficient.However, lest we conclude that God can reach the point where He shuts up entirely the bowels of His compassion, let us continue our studies in this fifteenth chapter and see that this is not so; for the concluding verses of the fifteenth chapter (Jeremiah 14:19-21), presentTHE BLESSED It was promised to the true and penitent Prophet!“Thus saith the Lord, If thou return, then will I bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before Me: * * return not thou unto them” (Jeremiah 15:19). There are times when to be saved one must separate himself from his own. That is what is meant—“If thou return”, We are so bound to friends by the ties of kinship and by the affections cultivated through the years, that we are tempted to take their way and to say, as Moses said, if they cannot be saved, “Blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy Book which Thou hast written”.Let it not be so! Come yourself; stand in person before Him. Separate from those who will not cease their companionship of the evil, even though you stand alone.How often men reach that very point. Well do I remember the morning when I reached that point myself. The best loved companion I had in the world was in the audience.

I knew full well that to go to God was to break from him and others who, though less dear, were precious. But I knew that either that break had to come, or my soul perish.

There is a Divine voice that says: “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing: and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (2 Corinthians 6:17-18).After all, salvation is a personal decision. It can never be else. It is a decision that cannot be made by crowds, but by an individual only. He who goes through “the straight and narrow gate” must, at the moment of his passing, walk alone, just exactly as he who passes the portals that connect time with eternity can take no one with him. That journey for a few seconds at least, until the face of the Saviour on the further side is seen, must be taken alone!However, in redemption’s plan, the Prophet’s penitent friends are included.“If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as My mouth”.That meant if some will come with you, let them return unto thee if they will, in other words, Let them come with thee “but return not unto them”.Here again there is a great principle involved, namely, “no mam, liveth unto himself”. Few men ever decide for Christ and stand alone.

In the act of decision they are alone, but in the instantaneous result they are likely to be accompanied. I had to quit my friend Thomas in order to reach my Christ, but what was my joy, as I felt some one coming to kneel by my side, to turn my weeping eyes and look to see that Howard, my closest neighbor boy and perhaps second in my affections, had determined to go with me.

He is today a banker, a deacon in his church, a great and Godly man!We may decide alone, but we will not walk alone; there will be others who will join us and take the trail of light that leads to the Eternal Home.Finally, the text voices alike the power and the compassion of God.“I will make thee unto this people a fenced brasen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee: for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the Lord. “And I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible” (Jeremiah 15:20-21). “I will deliver thee”. “I”, with whom is all power. “I will deliver”. “I will redeem”. Oh, what comfort! He who speaks, in this precious promise, has the power; and His compassion is such as to assure the promise.It is great to have the promise of God. The promise of His pardon, His peace! The promise of His keeping is contentment! The promise of a final place with Him is a foretaste of Heaven!Dear Jonathan Edwards was taken very ill at New Haven in 1725.

He started for his home at Windsor, but reaching North Village, could go no further; and there he hung between life and death for three months.He says: “I observed that those who were watching at my side would often be looking out of the window and they seemed to be watching very anxiously for the break of day. It reminded me of the words of the Psalmist: “My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning”. And he continued, “It was even so, ‘more than they that watched for the morning’, so when the light of the morning came into the window to refresh me it seemed to be some image of God’s glory.” Redemption then, is not only a deliverance from the hand of the wicked and out of the hand of the terrible, but eventually deliverance into the everlasting arms.