Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2274
“Therefore thus says the LORD of Hosts, Behold, I will melt them, and try them; for how shall I deal with the daughter of My people?” Jeremiah 9:7.
OBSERVE, here, that God represents Himself as greatly concerned to know what to do with His people. Of course, He speaks after the manner of men, for, as the infinitely wise God, knowing all things from the beginning, Jehovah knew what He would do. But yet, in order that we may understand something of the workings of the Divine mind, He represents Himself as brought to a non-plus and saying, in the words of our text, “How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?” There are some men and women in the world who seem to greatly perplex those who love them and who desire their welfare. They are a great perplexity to those with whom they live and who labor for their good—and it seems as if God, Himself, regarded it as a matter of perplexity when He said, “How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?”
But notice, next, the Lord is so resolved to save His people that He will use the sternest possible means rather than lose any of those whom He loves. He says here, “I will melt them, and try them; I will cast them into the furnace, and put them into the melting pot. I will make the fire so hot that their iron hearts shall melt and, though they are like Hell-hardened steel, devoid of feeling, I will make it so hot for them that they shall be melted. As men assay metal, pouring out the molten mass in a red-hot or white state, I will melt them and try them.”
Sinners, that God may save you, He will do the roughest things with you! He will not spare you any kind of sorrow here, or any sort of loss, or any measure of despair of spirit, so that He may bring you to Himself. He asks the question as though He were very anxious to avoid using His rough ways, “How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?” But He answers the question with all the severity of almighty love, “Behold, I will melt them, and try them. There is nothing else to be done with them, so I will do that by which alone they can be saved.”
Observe, once more, in our preface, that God’s concern about His people, and His resolve to use strange ways with them, springs out of His relationship to them, for He says, “How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?” “My people.” They were His, though they were very far away from Him through their evil ways. Though they had gone from evil to evil, though their lives provoked Him to the highest degree, yet He did not disown them! He remembered the Covenant that He made for them with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with Jacob—and because of that Covenant, He thought upon them for good and resolved to somehow save them. When God has chosen a man from before the foundation of the world, and when He has given that man over to Christ to be a part of the reward of His soul’s travail, He will adopt strange means to accomplish His sacred purpose. And He will carry out that purpose, let it cost him what it may!
We are going to apply these principles in three ways. First, to the matter of conversion. Secondly, to the matter of Christian life and thirdly, to the Church of God in its corporate capacity.
I. First, these principles may be applied to THE MATTER OF CONVERSION. There is a very simple way of being saved. It should be. I hope it is the common way. It is the simple way of following the call of Grace. This should be your way. I hope it is. The Gospel is preached, you believe it. Christ is set before you, you accept Him, you trust Him, you are saved. Without any violence, your heart is opened, as with the picklock of Grace. God puts the key into the door and steps into your heart without a word. “Whose heart the Lord opened,” we read of Lydia. Even if you have known nothing of the terror of the Lord, if you have had no strange convulsion of feeling, no earthquake, tempest and thunder— God is in the still small voice—and you are saved by His Grace as much as those who have had a deeper experience.
This is the way of salvation, but there are some who will not come this way. There is the Wicket Gate. They have but to knock and it will be opened, but they prefer to go round about through the Slough of Despond, or to get under the care of Mr. Worldly Wiseman who leads them round by the house of Mr. Legality, who dwells in the village of Morality. And there they go with their burdens on their backs, which they need not carry even for a single hour, for they would roll off directly if they would but look to Jesus and believe in Him. But they will not do this. There are some of whom God has to say, “How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?” Why is this?
Well, some of them have a crooked sort of mind. They never can believe anything straight—they must go round about. I know a friend whose conversation is always of this kind. If he were in King William Street and I were in the Borough, he could not come across London Bridge to me—he would find it necessary to go at least as far as Hamrnersmith before he crossed the river—and then he would come round to me. That is how he always talks. I sometimes get a little tired of that style and I wish he would come to the point at once. There are some minds of that sort. You say to some people, “Believe and live.” Then they begin scratching their heads a bit and saying, “What is it to believe, and what is it to live? And how can a man live by believing, and does he believe first, or does he live first? And if he lives before he believes, then how does believing make him live?”