Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1079
“Your Words were found, and I did eat them; and Your Word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart: for I am called by Your name, O Lord God of Hosts.” Jeremiah 15:16.
JEREMIAH had been greatly persecuted for his faithfulness in delivering the Word of God. He tells us the reason for his continuance in a work which brought him so sorrowful a reward. He makes us understand that he had been faithful in delivering God’s Word because that Word had been overpoweringly precious to his own soul. He could not do otherwise than speak the Truth of God, because that Truth had been his own daily food. He had met with nothing but ill-treatment from those whom he addressed. They had vilified him in every way—he had been put into the most noisome dungeon. He had been denied even bread and water—everything short of actually putting him to death had been inflicted upon him by his ungrateful countrymen.
But still he went on prophesying. He could not be silent. Though his prophesying brought him nothing but tears, yet he continued still to prophesy, for God’s Word came with such sweetness to his own soul and filled his heart with such ravishing joy and delight that he could not do otherwise than go and tell his fellow men what had been so delightful to himself. I believe this to be the secret of every living ministry. The ministry that is fed upon flattery and flatters those who flatter it is a poor feeble counterfeit and God will never bless it. But the ministry which under great difficulties and fierce opposition is still sustained because the preacher cannot help continuing in it is that which God will bless.
It was good advice of a venerable Divine to a young man who aspired to be a preacher, when he said to him, “Don’t become a minister if you can help it.” The man who could very easily be a tradesman or a merchant had better not be a minister! A preacher of the Gospel should always be a volunteer and yet he should always be a pressed man who serves his King because he is constrained to do so by God Himself. Only he is fit to preach who cannot avoid preaching—who feels that woe is upon him unless he preaches the Gospel—and that the very stones would cry out against him if he should hold his peace.
I have said that Jeremiah lets us into a secret. His outer life, consisting in his perpetual faithful ministry, was to be accounted for by his inward love of the Word which he preached. Depend upon it, this secret reveals all true spiritual life. If ever you see anyone who walks in holiness, stands fast in temptation and is upheld under affliction, you may rest assured there is a something about him that is not perceived by every eye—there is a secret which the world knows not of—a hidden fountain which sustains the stream of his life. There is an invisible spring of vitality which keeps him vigorous even in the midst of surrounding death. Bunyan’s metaphor was that he saw a fire which was burning under singular circumstances, for one stood before it who continually threw water upon it to quench it, and though he did so, yet the fire was not put out.
Christian could not understand the marvel till the Interpreter took him behind the wall and there he saw one that cast oil upon the fire as perseveringly as the enemy cast the water, so that the fire, being secretly nourished, could not be extinguished. Every Christian’s life is of that sort—there is abundance to destroy it, but, if it is sustained, there is a secret something which keeps that soul alive unto God and persevering to the end. We shall, then, tonight speak about the secret life of the Believer and afterwards upon his public life. His secret life is described in this way: “Your Words were found, and I did eat them; and Your Word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.” That was for himself alone. In the next sentence you have his public life, his manifestation before men—“For I am called by Your name O Jehovah, God of Hosts.”
I. Now observe that in the description of Jeremiah’s SECRET LIFE which consists of his inward reception of the Word of God, (which description will answer for ourselves), we have three points—the finding of God’s Word, the eating of it and the rejoicing in it with all his heart. First, you have the finding of it—“Your Words were found.” Now
we have not to find God’s Word as Jeremiah had, by waiting until the Spirit of God reveals fresh Truths of God, for the Spirit of God now reveals no fresh Truth to us. He takes of the things of Christ—the things which are revealed in the Scriptures—and opens them and applies them to us.
We are not to expect any addition to the sacred canon—the Book is finished and there shall be nothing added to it. We have not to find God’s Word, therefore, in that respect. If any man comes to me and says, “I have God’s Word for you”—if he speaks not according to this Book, you may know at once that he is a liar and that his utterance is a vain imagination. Yes, though he should come with pretended miracles and should boast proudly of his visions, yet is he to be rejected, for Holy Scripture is the mind of God and novelties are the fancies of men. And, therefore, when we use the term “finding” God’s Word, we must use it rightly and our meaning will be mainly contained in the following senses—First, we read the Word. Here it is—God’s Word is all here and, if we would find it, we must read it earnestly.