Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2399
“Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus says the LORD, ‘I remember you, the kindness of your youth, the love of your espousals, when you went after Me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.’” Jeremiah 2:2.
THIS was the Word of Jehovah to His ancient people. He remembered the faithfulness and earnestness of Israel when the nation was first born and came out of Egypt under Moses—and went after God into “the waste howling wilderness.” Alas, in later years, they would not obey, or trust, or rejoice in God! He therefore tells the Prophet Jeremiah to say to them that He remembers their better days—they seemed to have forgotten, “but,” says the Lord—“I have not forgotten. ‘I remember you, the kindness of your youth, the love of your espousals.’”
I. Using the text practically for our own profit, I make this first observation, that GOD REMEMBERS WITH GRACE THE BEST THINGS OF HIS PEOPLE’S EARLY DAYS.
Some of us were converted to God when we were very young and we look back with pleasure upon our early days. But, whether we look back upon them with pleasure or not, God does, and He says, “I remember you, the kindness of your youth, the love of your espousals.” Why does God remember and prize so highly the early piety of His people, their first faith, their first love, their first zeal?
I think that it is, first, because all these were His own work. If there was anything good in us, in the early days after our conversion, the Lord worked it all! Remember Paul’s questions to the Corinthians—“Who makes you to differ from another? And what have you that you did not receive?” If there was in you any light, or life, or love, it was the gift of the Spirit of God. If there was any repentance, if there was any faith, it was the work of the Holy Spirit! A man remembers his own work and God, the Holy Spirit, never forgets any of His work upon the spirits of men whom He forms anew.
God also remembers with pleasure those best things in His people’s early days because they gave Him great delight at the time. It seems a strange thing to say, but it is strangely, yet blessedly true, that it gave God great pleasure to see us repent. Those first tears which we tried to secretly brush away were so precious to the Lord that He stored them away in His bottle! That first faith of ours, though it was but the feeble tottering of a babe in Grace, was very lovely in God’s sight. You know how mothers love to recollect the first words their children began to speak and the broken notes and strange tones in which they lisped their first childish sentences? Well, even so does God remember His children’s early utterances which gave Him such pleasure when He first heard them. Let not any of you imagine that God is indifferent to your first prayers, your first praises, your first reformations and purging away of sin! No, He takes infinite delight in them all, for, “like as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him.” Therefore, you can be sure that the things which gave Him such joy in your early Christian experience have not faded from His gracious memory!
It is very sweet, however, to reflect that when God says that He remembers the love of our espousals, and the kindness of our youth, He does not mention the faults connected with our early days. Our gracious God has a very generous memory—we have often noticed this in the Scriptures. When the Lord and His angels came to Abraham’s tent in the plains of Mamre, to give the Patriarch the promise that a son and heir should be born to him, Sarah turned eavesdropper behind the tent doors. It was bad manners on her part and when she had overheard what the Lord said, she disbelieved Him and laughed within herself. This was worse manners, still, on her part, to laugh at the Divine Prophecy, and when she was brought to book for it, she denied that she had laughed, which was still worse! When she laughed within herself, she said, “After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old, also?” And the Holy Spirit, writing in the New
Testament about her, does not say anything concerning her lie, or her unbelief, but He mentions the only good thing about her speech, which was that she called her husband, “lord”—“For after this manner in the old time the holy women, also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling Him lord.”
Oh, the gracious goodness that spies out the diamond on the dunghill! There was but one bright star in all that murky sky, yet the Spirit of God saw it and moved Peter to write concerning it! That which was to Sarah’s credit is recorded, while that which was to her discredit is blotted out. “You have heard of the patience of Job,” have you not? The Holy Spirit is very careful to remind us, in the New Testament, of the patience of Job, but He does not say anything about Job’s impatience! Yet the Patriarch cursed the day of his birth in a very bitter and wicked fashion and this might have been remembered to his shame, but it was not. Ah, our blessed Lord, when He forgives our sin, forgets it, too! But He remembers all the excellencies and all the Graces which His Spirit works in the hearts and lives of His people.