Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2460
“Is not My Word like as a fire? says the LORD; and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” Jeremiah 23:29.
As we noticed while reading the chapter, there were a great many pretenders in the times of Jeremiah, so that when the true Prophet of God came forth and declared, “Thus says the Lord,” he was met by false prophets who contradicted him and said something the very reverse of what he had to say and yet prefaced their utterance with the same declaration, “Thus says the Lord.” This, of course, tended very much to harden the hearts of the people against the Divine message, and it also grievously embarrassed Jeremiah. He hardly knew how to meet it—it seemed to checkmate him.
This evil also greatly grieved the Lord, for it was not according to His mind that these men should pretend to speak under His Inspiration and to speak as if they felt the burden of the Lord, when He had never sent them and they had not delivered His message. He therefore gave a test by which the true could be distinguished from the false. In the verse before our text, the Lord asks, “What is the chaff to the wheat?” That which these false prophets said was but chaff compared with the Divine message delivered by Jeremiah, which was as wheat—so the Lord puts the matter thus, “You hear these men speak and you are interested and pleased, and you say to yourselves, ‘This is fine oratory, this man has a grand way of speaking.’ You admire his style, his eloquence, his depth of thought and all that, but I say to you, ‘Is not My Word like as a fire?’ It comes not as a thing of beauty, but with force, with energy. It comes to you, not that you may stand and look at it, but it has within itself a burning and consuming force. And by this shall My Word be known from the word of man—that it has a mystic power about it which cannot be found in the words of men. And it is a breaking force, as when a mighty hammer strikes the rock, and strikes it again and again till even the solid granite is compelled to yield.”
The false prophets had no such force in their words. They did not pretend to have any fire in what they said. They spoke very pleasingly and very flatteringly—they made the people vain—they told them, in effect, that nothing would happen but what would delight them! They might go on in their sins, but it would be all right. They might indulge the most bland hopes that everything in the future would be according to their own wishes. That was man’s word, but when the Lord spoke by His servant, Jeremiah, His Word was “like as a fire.” There was something burning about it—human nature did not like it—but human nature was made to feel its force and power! When the false prophets spoke, they would bow and cringe to the people and say all manner of soft and pleasing things. But when Jeremiah spoke, in the name of Jehovah, every Word seemed to tell upon his hearers! It was as when a mighty man lifts up a sledgehammer and brings it down with all his force upon the stone he means to break. The message did not comfort the ungodly, but it broke their hearts, for the Prophet was seeking, if possible, to separate them from their sins.
We will begin with the statement which is made so plainly here, the Word of God has power in it. It is like fire. It is like a hammer. It is like fire and hammer combined and it operates upon men’s hearts much in the way in which the fire and hammer of the smith operate upon the iron, fashioning and shaping it according to his design. When I have spoken upon this point, I will seek, first, to illustrate this statement. And then to put it to a practical test.
I. First then, THE WORD OF GOD HAS POWER IN IT.
And first, the Lord Himself says it is like a fire. I am now speaking of God’s Word. Not, mark you, God’s Word as it is declared by certain men. Not as it may come to you garnished with force of eloquence, beauty of poetry, animation of expression and the like—but the Word of God itself—the Truths of God which are revealed in this wonderful Book, the Truths which the Holy Spirit has been pleased to make known to the sons of men. These are “like as a fire.” You who are the people of God must often have felt greatly comforted, encouraged and cheered when you have been hearing the Gospel, just as when, on a cold day, and you are half numbed with cold, if your eyes are blindfolded you know when you are coming near a fire by the genial glow which you feel. You delight yourself in the Word of the Lord as you warm your hands at a bright cheery fire! Is it not so when God’s Word is preached? Men may laugh at us and say that we have a very sweet tooth for certain doctrines, but even dogs know when they are well fed. “The ox knows his owner and the ass his master’s crib”—and we are not so foolish that we do not know what Truth it is that cheers and comforts our heart and what kind of teaching it is that makes us glad in the midst of the winter of our discontent.