Sermon III. Righteous zeal encouraged by divine protection.
“Let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them. 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: for I am with thee to save thee, and to deliver thee, saith the Lord.” — Jer. xv. 19, 20.
The words of my text having a full dependence upon, and flowing out from, the main subject-matter of the whole chapter, I must of necessity take a view thereof, and hold out unto you the mind of God contained therein, before I enter upon the part thereof chiefly intended. And this I shall do with very brief observations, that I may not anticipate myself from a full opening and application of the words of my text.
And this the rather are my thoughts led unto, because the whole transaction of things between the Lord and a stubbornly sinful nation, exceedingly accommodated to the carrying on of the controversy he is now pleading with that wherein we live, is set out (as we say) to the life therein.
Of the whole chapter there be these five parts:—
First, The denunciation of fearful wasting, destroying judgments against Judah and Jerusalem, verse 3, and so on to verse 10.
Secondly, The procuring, deserving cause of these overwhelming calamities, verses 4 and 6.
Thirdly, The inevitableness of these judgments, and the inexorableness of the Lord as to the accomplishment of all the evils denounced, verse 1.
Fourthly, The state and condition of the prophet, with the frame and deportment of his spirit under those bitter dispensations of Providence, verse 10, and 15–18.
Fifthly, The answer and appearance of God unto him upon the making out of his complaint, verses 11–14, and 19–21.
My text lieth in the last part, but yet with such dependence on the former as enforceth to a consideration of them.
First. There is the denunciation of fearful wasting, destroying judgments, to sinful Jerusalem, verse 2, and so onwards, with some interposed ejaculations concerning her inevitable ruin, as verses 5, 6.
Here’s death, sword, famine, captivity, verse 2; — banishment, verse 4; — unpitied desolation, verse 5; — redoubled destruction, bereaving, fanning, spoiling, etc., verses 6–9. That universal devastation of the whole people which came upon them in the Babylonish captivity is the thing here intended, — the means of its accomplishment by particular plagues and judgments, in their several kinds (for the greater dread and terror), being at large annumerated, — the faithfulness of God, also, being made hereby to shine more clear in the dispersion of that people; — doing not only for the main what before he had threatened, but in particular executing the judgments recorded, Luke xxi. 24, etc.; Deut. xxviii. 15–57, — fulfilling hereby what he had devised, accomplishing the word he had commanded in the days of old, Lam. ii. 17.
That which hence I shall observe is only from the variety of these particulars, which are held out as the means of the intended desolation.
Observation. God’s treasures of wrath against a sinful people have sundry and various issues for the accomplishment of the appointed end.
When God walks contrary to a people, it is not always in one path; he hath seven ways to do it, and will do it seven times, Lev. xxvi. 24. He strikes not always with one weapon, nor in one place. As there is with him ποικίλη χάρις, “manifold and various grace,” 1 Pet. iv. 10, — love and compassion making out itself in choice variety, suited to our manifold indigencies; so there is ὀργὴ τεθησαυρισμένη, Rom. ii. 5, — stored, treasured wrath, suiting itself in its flowings out to the provocations of stubborn sinners.
The first emblem of God’s wrath against man was a “flaming sword turning itself every way,” Gen. iii. 24. Not only in one or two, but in all their paths he meeteth them with his flaming sword. As a wild beast in a net,1 so are sinners under inexorable judgments; the more they strive, the more they are enwrapped and entangled; they shuffle themselves from under one calamity, and fall into another: “As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him,” Amos v. 19. Oh! remove this one plague, saith Pharaoh.2 If he can escape from under this pressure, he thinks he shall be free; — but when he fled from the lion, still the bear met him; and when he went into the house, the serpent bit him. And as the flaming sword turns every way, so God can put it into every thing. To those that cry, Give me a king, God can give him in his anger; and from those that cry, Take him away, he can take him away in his wrath, Hos. xiii. 10, 11.