Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 462
“Ah Lord God, behold, You have made the Heaven and the earth by Your great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for You.” Jeremiah 32:17.
Now, this was a strange purchase for a rational man to make. Prudence could not justify it—it was purchasing an estate which was utterly valueless. Reason would repudiate the notion. It was buying with scarcely a probability that the person purchasing could ever enjoy the possession. But it was enough for Jeremiah that his God had bid him, for well he knew that God will be justified of all His children who act in faith. He bought the piece of land, and it was secured to him. He did as he was commanded and returned to his dungeon.
When he came into his chamber alone, it is possible that he began to question himself as to what he had been doing and troubled thoughts rolled over his mind. “I have been purchasing a useless possession,” said he. See how he refuses to indulge the thought. He gets as far as saying, “Ah, Lord God!” as if he were about to utter some unbelieving or rebellious sentence—but he stops himself, “You can make this plot of ground of use to me. You can rid this land of these oppressors. You can make me yet sit under my vine and my fig tree in the heritage which I have bought. For You did make the heavens and the earth and there is nothing too hard for You.”
Beloved, this gave a majesty to the early saints, that they dared to do at God’s command, things which were unaccountable to sense and which reason would condemn. They consulted not with flesh and blood. But whether it is a Noah who is to build a ship on dry land, an Abraham who is to offer up his only son, or a Moses who is to despise the treasures of Egypt, or a Joshua who is to besiege Jericho seven days using no weapons but the blasts of rams’ horns—they all act upon God’s command. They act contrary to all the dictates of carnal reason. And God, even the Lord God, gives a rich reward as the result of their obedient faith.
I would to God we had in the religion of these modern times, a more potent infusion of this heroic faith in God. But no. I see the Christian Church degenerating more and more into a society acting upon the same principles as commercial companies. The Church, I fear, cannot now say, “We walk by faith and not by sight.” When Edward Irving preached that memorable sermon concerning the missionary, who, he thought, was bound to go forth without purse or scrip, and trust in his God alone, to preach the Word, a howl went up to Heaven against the man as a fanatic.
They said he was visionary, unpractical, mad—and all because he dared to preach a sermon full of faith in God. I do avow myself fully in sympathy with the views which he then enunciated. And I think, if the power of God were once more to baptize the Church, we should have men who would dare to trust in God instead of putting confidence in men. Men who would act once more as if God’s bare arm were quite enough to lean on, as if faith were not fanaticism, as if confidence in an unseen Being were not an unjustifiable enthusiasm.
I would to God the Church had once again a rich anointing of the supernatural, and I believe she would have, if she would again act by faith. And if you and I, Brothers and Sisters, would venture more upon the naked promises of God, we should enter a world of wonders to which as yet we are strangers. If we would but walk the waters of trouble by a living faith, we should find them solid as marble beneath our feet. If once again we could, like the world, be hung upon nothing but the simple power and Providence of God, I am sure we should find it a blessed and a safe way of living— glorious to God and honorable to ourselves.
I would that once again the Master would raise up a race of heroes who would be ridiculed by the world, and despised by mere professors. Men who would act by faith in the God that lives and abides forever. Men who venture on bold deeds where the weakness of the human arm would be manifest, and the might of Deity revealed. Then should we see the millennial age dawning upon us, and God, even our own God, would bless us, and all the ends of the earth would fear
Him.
Dear Fiends, it is my business this morning to conduct you to Jeremiah’s place of confidence. Seeing that his case is hopeless, knowing that man can do nothing at all for him, the Prophet resorts at once to the God that created the Heaven and the earth and he exclaims, “Nothing is too hard for You.” I shall use my text in addressing three characters—to stimulate the evangelist. To encourage the enquirer. And to comfort the Believer.
I. TO STIMULATE THE EVANGELIST. And who is the evangelist? Every man and woman who has tasted that the Lord is gracious should be an Evangelist. We should, without exception, if we have been begotten again into a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, tell to all around us what they must do to be saved. There should be no dumb tongue in all our host. We should have no idle hand in the harvest field, but everyone in his measure, whether man or woman, should be doing something to extend the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.