Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2675
“Is there anything too hard for Me?” Jeremiah 32:27.
A Truth of God may be sincerely believed by us and yet it may do us good to have it put in the form of a question. As I read the chapter, I called your attention to Jeremiah’s confident declaration to God, “There is nothing too hard for You.” Yet in our text, which is only a few verses further on in the chapter, the Lord says to this same Prophet, “Is there anything too hard for Me?” I think the explanation of this mystery is that we do not always thoroughly believe even all that we do truly believe. We may believe it so as to have no doubt about it, but not so believe it as to be prepared to put it into practice. Jeremiah might say to the Lord, “There is nothing too hard for You,” and he might be confident of the truth of his words, yet there might be, in the background, so much mistrust, possibly imperceptible to himself, that it might be necessary for God to put the matter to him in the form of a question and to say, even to believing Jeremiah, “Is there anything too hard for Me?” Ah, we little know what unbelievers we really are! The most of us are scarcely aware of what an awful amount of skepticism still lies lurking within our breasts, only waiting for the opportunity to show itself.
Besides, dear Friends, you must always remember that it is one thing to believe a general doctrine, but it is quite another thing to make a particular and personal application of it. Jeremiah believes that God can drive away the Chaldeans and leave the land free for the use of its owners—but can he believe that the little plot of ground at Anathoth, for which he has just paid 17 shekels of silver, will ever be worth the money it has cost him? I expect the devil began to inject doubts into his mind concerning that transaction by saying to him, “Can you trust God about that purchase of land?” So the Lord does not, at once, accept Jeremiah’s declaration when the Prophet says, “There is nothing too hard for You,” but He puts to him a direct question relating to that very point, “Is there anything too hard for Me?” Some of you think you could believe concerning the conversion of a nation, but do you never have doubts concerning the conversion of a perverse child? You believe in the peacefulness that is to reign during the millennium, but have you never had a doubt about the peace of your own domestic circle? You could trust God, you say, in a storm at sea, but can you trust Him about that bad debt on your books? You could depend upon Him, you say, in death and throughout eternity, but can you depend upon Him about that trifling matter which is just now bothering you and giving you so much vexation? Is there anything, great or small, that is too hard for God? That is the question I am going to try to answer. I throw down the challenge, in the name of the glorious God who said to Jeremiah, “Is there anything too hard for Me?” Now is your opportunity to bring up your hard things, your difficult things, your apparently impossible things and to see how they are affected by this challenge of the Most High—“Is there anything too hard for Me?”
In calling attention to this challenge of Jehovah, I ask you to remember, first, that the hardest conceivable things have already been done by God. Next, I will mention some of the hard things which remain to be done. And, lastly, since nothing is too hard for the Lord, I will try to answer the short and simple question, “What then?”
I. First, then, I want you to remember that THE HARDEST CONCEIVABLE THINGS HAVE ALREADY BEEN DONE BY GOD.
Let us begin at the beginning, with God’s work of creation, as Jeremiah does in this very chapter, and we shall then say, with him, that Jehovah “made the Heaven and the earth.” There was a time when there was nothing that had been
created and God dwelt alone. There was no raw material out of which to construct the universe, yet, when it pleased Him to do so, everything was formed and fashioned by God out of nothing. What, then, can He not do after having done that? I ask you to also think what God did afterwards. At first, when He made the world, He left it for ages in an unfinished state, for “in the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void.” But, long afterwards, when He came to put it in order, and make it fit for man’s abode—and then to create man to have dominion over all the earth—who was with Him to help Him? “With whom took He counsel and who instructed Him?” With His own hands He piled up the mountains and dug the foundations of the great deep. His unaided power achieved it all! Everything was in darkness even after He had made it, but He spoke, and said, “Light, be,” “and there was light.” Everything was in confusion and chaos. The earth and the waters were mingled together, but again He spoke, and divided the land from the sea, and the clouds rose up to paint the sky, the rivers sought their bed and old Ocean was girt about with his belt of sand!