Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2020
Delivered on Lord’s Day Morning, April 22, 1888
“Then came the word of the Lord unto Jeremiah, saying, Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for Me?” Jeremiah 32:26,27.
THIS method of questioning the person to be instructed is known to teachers as the Socratic method. Socrates was likely, not so much to state a fact as to ask a question and draw out thoughts from those whom he taught. His method had long before been used by a far greater teacher. Putting questions is Jehovah’s frequent method of instruction. When the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind it was with a series of questions. “Know you the ordinances of Heaven? Can you set the dominion thereof in the earth? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover you? Can you send lightning, that they may go and say unto you, Here we are?” and so forth.
Questions from the Lord are very often the strongest affirmations. He would have us perceive their absolute certainty. They are put in this particular form because He would have us think over His great thought and confirm it by our own reflections. The Lord shines upon us in the question and our answer to it is the reflection of His light. The Infallible One challenges a contradiction, or even a doubt. “Is anything too hard for Me?” is the strongest way of saying that nothing can be too hard for Him, for it proclaims defiance to Heaven and earth and Hell, to produce a difficulty which can perplex the Lord.
I invite you, therefore, dear Friends, to turn the question over in your minds till the omnipotence of Jehovah shall be your one all-absorbing thought. You cannot think of anything which renders it necessary to put a footnote to the text. Search well and see if it needs qualification. See whether there is an exception to the rule of absolute omnipotence. Revolve the Divine question long and well—“Is anything too hard for Me?” May your thoughts be awake at this time! May the Truth of the text take possession of your minds and fill them with its fragrance even as the woman’s box of ointment filled the room with its perfume!
I. I shall ask you, first, to consider the wonderful question of our text which the Lord put to the Prophet, VIEWING IT AS NECESSARY. The utterance of these words was no superfluity, there was need for them to be spoken. Flesh is frail and mortal minds are forgetful. And Jeremiah, great as he was, was but a man.
It was needful to tell the Prophet this though he knew it. He never doubted that the Lord is Almighty and yet it was needful for Jehovah Himself to speak home this Truth to his mind and heart. It is often necessary for the Lord Himself to drive home a Truth into the mind of His most faithful servant. None can teach as the Lord teaches. Truth is never fully known by the sons of Zion until the Lord teaches it to them. Hence it is written, “all your children shall be taught of the
Lord.”
We learn much in many ways, but we learn nothing vitally and practically till the Spirit of God becomes our schoolmaster. The God of Truth must teach us the Truth of God or we shall never learn it. Jeremiah knew this Truth in his inmost soul—see the sixteenth and seventeenth verses of this chapter—“I prayed unto the Lord, saying, 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.” He expressed the Truth admirably and yet the Lord saw it needful to give him a special Divine Revelation to impress it more fully upon his heart.
Brethren, it is one thing to know that such a doctrine is true and quite another thing to know the Truth itself. We need to be persuaded of it so as to embrace it. It is a glorious thing to see Truth blaze out as if written in letters of fire. We are far too apt to put Truth down in our creed and after that to shut it away from practical everyday use. We believe it and we should be indignant if anybody disputed it. And yet we ignore it. The Truth of God laid upon the shelf is as
good as unknown. Doctrines which are disputed often have the most influence upon the community because they are brought clearly before men’s minds. And being threshed out, they yield seed for the sower and bread for the eater.
We read in one of the Epistles, “I put you in remembrance of these things, though you know them and are established in the present truth.” There is a Proverb which says that, “Truth is mighty and will prevail.” That is true, as far as it goes. But the Truth of God may be formally admitted and then it may be laid aside and so may never prevail. It is ill to treat a Truth like some great Egyptian king who is swathed in fine linen, embalmed with precious spices and pompously placed in the tomb with other honorable mummies. The Lord would not have the Truth of His own omnipotence thus dealt with, and therefore He comes forth from His secret place and speaks personally to His servant, saying, “Is anything too hard for Me?”