Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1032
Delivered on Lord’s Day Evening, January 14th, 1872, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
‘Thus saith the Lord; Thou hast broken the yokes of wood; but thou shalt make for them yokes of iron.”Jeremiah 28:13.
ALL THROUGH THE BOOK of Jeremiah you will observe that the prophet taught the people not only by words, but by symbols. At one time he took his mantle and hid it in the earth till it was soiled and worn, and then taught them something by wearing it. At another time he took an earthen pot and broke it in their presence. And on this occasion he put a yoke about his own neck as the token that Israel should be subdued beneath the power of Nebuchadnezzar. This was a strange method of teaching. I have sometimes heard complaints made by those who are fond of criticizing things they know nothing about’when a teacher puts a truth very plainly, if he shall, as it were, act what he says, he is upbraided at once as being histrionic. I know not what ungenerous words are hurled at him. Yet after all, this was what Jeremiah did. He taught the people by signs and symbols. So, too, our Lord himself. I doubt not, that when he uttered those words, ‘Consider the lilies,’ he stooped down and plucked a lily; and when he said, ‘Consider the ravens,’ he pointed to the ravens flying overhead, in the sky. At any rate, we know that once he took a little child, and set it in the midst of them. What an outcry there would be if I were to take a little child and set him here and preach about him! Did we use any kind of symbol, to what ridicule we should expose ourselves! The fact is, we might do much more good if we did less regard the general current of public opinion, and ventured to do strange things, that anyhow the truth of God might come home to a slumbering generation, and the Word of God, which must be learnt by them or they must perish, were made to tell upon their minds. The prophet Jeremiah, though exceedingly faithful in his mission, which he discharged as God would have him discharge it, with many tears in great love and deep anxiety, nevertheless had a great obstacle in his way. He was met by false prophets who withstood and contradicted him to his face. Not so very surprising either. It must ever be expected that it will be so. If God shall speak by any man, there shall be some other who protests that God speaks by him to the contrary. If there be a Christ, there will be an Antichrist; if there be a Simon Peter, there will be a Simon Marcus, if there shall be raised up by God a Luther, there shall be an Eckius, or some other controversialist who shall seek to resist and overthrow him. Let no man’s heart then fail him if he be flatly contradicted when he bears testimony for God. Let him rather expect it, and go on never caring, for the fact is, the truth will outlive error, and in the long run that Word of God before which all things else are as grass and as the flower, the perishing flower of the field’the Word of God shall endure for ever and triumph over the ruin of all the words of men. Tremble not, ye feeble adherents of the truth, who fear lest your weakness should make the truth itself weak, and the strong logic and the powerful rhetoric of its adversaries should overturn the oracles of God. It cannot be. The gates of hell shall not prevail against the gospel, mighty though they be both in power and in sophistry. The truth shall abide; the right shall prevail; for God is faithful, and Christ must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet.
With this, by way of preliminary observation, we will now come to the text, and endeavor to make some use of it for ourselves. Hananiah took off the symbolic yoke, the wooden yoke, from Jeremiah’s neck and broke it. Jeremiah comes again, and says, ‘You have broken the yoke of wood, but God has commanded that ye shall now wear yokes of iron.’ They were not benefited, therefore, by the change, but the reverse. This is suggestive of a broad principle. From the symbol, which was applicable in one case, we draw a general truth. Whenever men say of God, ‘Let us break his bands asunder, and cast his cords from us,’ they may do so if they will; but instead of the yokes of wood they will be sure to get yokes of iron. If they will not submit to the government of Christ, they will have to submit to the tyranny of Satan. Some yoke they will have to wear, and if they reject the easy yoke of the Christ of God, the wooden yoke as it were which he puts on men, there shall be made for them yokes of iron, which they shall neither be able to break off nor yet to support.
So our thought will run this way. First, that men must wear some yoke or other; and, secondly, that the yoke of Christ is a very easy one; and, thirdly, that when it is refused, it is inevitable that men should wear a heavier one.
I. MEN MUST WEAR SOME YOKE. It is so naturally. There is no stage of life in which this is not the case. The child must bear the yoke in his youth. He is an unhappy child that is under no control. Probably there is nothing so ruinous to a man as to be allowed to have his own way, while yet his judgment is not ripe enough to guide him. And when we advance into youth, we are usually placed in some position of life where we are under obligations to some superior, be he parent, or guardian, or employer. Nor if we become what is called our own masters, does it make much difference. As things go now, I think there are no people that are their own masters, for the masters are bound to yield to the terms which the servants dictate; and this condition of things is getting more and more rife. I shall not discuss the right or wrong of this, where questions arise between capitalists and skillful laborers, but I will say that if the employed claim liberty, the masters might very well be allowed a portion of that choice prerogative. As it is now, I am sure he that says, ‘I am a master,’ is as much under the yoke to his servants as the servant is under the yoke to his master. That a man who lives in the midst of society should hold some relationship to all around him is indispensable. But men are always for changing their forms of government. Some nations have a revolution almost with every moon, but for all that there is still a yoke upon them; and if it were ever to come to anarchy, to mob rule’ah, I warrant you, it would be a yoke of iron, and of red hot iron too. God save us from it. No yoke is so hard to bear as that yoke which a people put upon themselves when they reject all order, break through all law, and will not submit to any principle or any government, however just or righteous. You cannot get on in this world without a yoke of some sort. We are not going to wear a tyrant’s yoke any of us. Let lords and lands have what masters they will: in this land of ours we will be free, and our own masters still; but the selfishness of individuals or of classes must never determine the boundary lines of power or of privilege; for we can only maintain our freedom by everyone of us paying that right obedience to the law which is due from every citizen, if we would promote alike his own comfort and the common weal.