Jeremiah 1:8

Jeremiah 1:8

The prophets were ever ungratefully treated by the Israelites; they were resisted, their warnings neglected, their good services forgotten. But there was this difference between the earlier and the later prophets: the earlier lived and died in honour among their people, in outward honour; though hated and thwarted by the wicked, they were exalted to high places, and ruled in the congregation. But in the later times, the prophets were not only feared and hated by the enemies of God, but cast out of the vineyard. As the time approached for the coming of the true Prophet of the Church, the Son of God, they resembled Him in their earthly fortunes more and more, and as He was to suffer, so did they. Moses was a ruler, Jeremiah was an outcast; Samuel was buried in peace, John the Baptist was beheaded.

I. Of all the persecuted prophets, Jeremiah is the most eminent, i.e.we know more of his history, of his imprisonments, his wanderings, and his afflictions. He comes next to David I do not say in dignity and privilege, for it was Elijah who was taken up to heaven and appeared at the Transfiguration; nor to inspiration, for to Isaiah one should assign the higher evangelical gifts; but in typifying Him who came and wept over Jerusalem, and there was tortured and put to death by those He wept over.

II. Jeremiah's ministry may be summed up in three words: good hope, labour, disappointment. No prophet commenced his labours with greater encouragement than Jeremiah. A king had ascended to the throne who was bringing back the times of the man after God's own heart. Josiah, too, was young at most twenty years of age in the beginning of his reformation. What might not be effected in a course of years, however corrupt and degraded was the existing state of his people? So Jeremiah might think. Everyone begins with being sanguine; doubtless then, as now, many labourers in God's husbandry entered on their office with more lively hopes than their after fortune warranted. Whether or not, however, such hope of success encouraged Jeremiah's first exertions, very soon, in his case, this cheerful prospect was overcast, and he was left to labour in the dark. Huldah foretold a woe an early removal of the good Josiah to his rest, as a mercy to him and to the nation, who were unworthy of him; a fierce destruction. This prophecy was delivered five years after Jeremiah entered into his office; he ministered in all forty years before the captivity; so early in his course were his hopes cut away.

III. All of us live in a world which promises well, but does not fulfil; all of us begin with hope and end with disappointment. Let us prepare for suffering and disappointment, which befit us as sinners, and are necessary for us as saints. Let us not turn away from trial when God brings it on us, or play the coward in the fight of faith. Take the prophets for an example of suffering affliction and of patience. "Behold, we count them happy who endure." The prophets went through sufferings to which ours are mere trifles; violence and craft combined to turn them aside, but they kept right on, and are at rest.

Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. v., p. 248; see also J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. viii., p. 124.

Reference: Jeremiah 2:2. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 352.