Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2745
“Are You not He, O Lord our God? Therefore we will wait for You” Jeremiah 14:22.
THIS is an instance of amazing yet holy boldness. The Prophet had received from the Lord the explicit command, “Pray not for this people: for their good,” and yet, after reasoning with God, his heart grew so warm with sacred fervor and his spirit became fired with such a passionate zeal that he could not help pleading for the sinful nation! He poured out his soul in the vehement prayer and said to the Lord, “We will wait upon You.” This was, perhaps, disobedience in the outward form, but it was not disobedience as to the inner spirit of the Prophet, for the Lord counts not as disobedience the earnest pleading and yearning of the heart of His people. This is a marvelous instance of how, under the most discouraging circumstances—when there appears no prospect whatever of success—men who are moved of God to pray for their fellows, will cling to His garments and still intercede on behalf of those who are altogether unworthy of their supplications.
One of the reasons why Jeremiah resolved that he would still wait upon God was because the case was such an urgent one. The land was chapped through the long drought. The poor beasts were dying of thirst. Men and women were pale and pinched with hunger and there was no one who could deliver them out of their distress. The heavens could not pour down rain of themselves and the gods of the heathen could not render any help, so Jeremiah says, “Therefore we will wait upon You. It is our only hope and though it seems to be a forlorn one, yet, since it is the only one we have, we will cling to it with desperate resolve.”
There are two things which appear to me to be strikingly illustrated by our text and its connection. The first is the beauty of an intercessor—and I want you to so admire it as to imitate the intercession. And the second is the necessity which drives men to God—and I want you to feel the necessity which drives you to wait upon the Lord. May God the Holy Spirit make you feel it!
I. First, I want you to see the beauty of a true intercessor and to endeavor, by the power of God’s Spirit, to IMITATE THE INTERCESSION.
Jeremiah interceded for the people, but we have not to seek far before we discover the reason why he did it. God, in Infinite Mercy, gave the weeping Prophet to his sinful people in order that they might not be left as sheep without a shepherd and be quite given over to utter destruction. And wherever you meet with a man who intercedes with God for his fellow men and makes this the main business of his life, you see in him one of the most precious gifts of God’s Grace to the age in which he lives. It is God that writes intercession upon men’s hearts. All true prayer comes from Him, but especially that least selfish and most Christ-like form of prayer called intercession—when the suppliant forgets all about himself and his own needs—and all his pleading, his tears and his arguments are on behalf of others. I repeat that such men are a most precious gift from Heaven and I feel certain that before the Reformation, there must have been hundreds of godly men and women who were, day and night, interceding with the Lord and giving Him no rest until He answered their supplications—and Luther and the rest of the Reformers were sent by God in answer to the many prayers which history has never recorded, but which are written in the Lord’s Book of Remembrance.
And when Wesley and Whitefield, in more modern times, stirred the smoldering embers of religion in this land, it was because godly people, perhaps poor obscure men and women in their cottages, reading the Scriptures, saw the sad state of irreligion and indifference into which the nation had fallen—and groaned over it and spread the case before God. I know not how to estimate the worth of even one man who has power with God in prayer! When John Knox went upstairs to plead for Scotland, it was the greatest event in Scottish history. All things are possible with the man who, like Elijah upon Carmel, casts himself down upon the earth and puts his face between his knees, and cries unto Him that hears prayer, till the heavens, which were like brass, suddenly drop with plenteous showers of rain! There is no power like that of intercession! The secret springs that move the puppets of earth—for kings and princes are often little more than that—are the prayers of God’s believing people. The hidden wheels that start the whole machinery and that keep it in motion, are the prayers of God’s people. Oh, if the Lord makes you an intercessor, my dear Brother or Sister, even if you cannot speak with men for God, if you know how to speak with God for men, you occupy a position that is second to none. God help you to fill it well!
True intercessors, then, are special gifts from God and when He raises up men or women for this high service, you will find that such persons plead with mighty arguments. You must have noticed, as we read the chapter, [Exposition at the end of the sermon was always before the sermon.] that Jeremiah knew well what he was praying about. He had, in his mind’s eye, all those nobles of the land who were reduced to such poverty that they sent their children out to hunt for water. His prophetical eye could even see the hinds in the field leaving their fawns to die because there was no grass for them to eat, and no water for them to drink. Jeremiah had upon his heart all the agony of the nation and he prayed as if his were the thirst, and as if he were perishing of hunger! He took the burden of the guilty people upon himself and became their mouthpiece to God, although they did not thank him for pleading for them, but smote him, and despitefully used him. Yet he took all their griefs into his own sympathetic heart and he pleaded mightily with God while he had all that great burden resting upon his spirit.