Bible Commentaries

Jeremiah 23:6

I. We may view the text as simply an announcement of important truth. It stands there on the sacred page like a profound oracular utterance from the hidden shrine of truth, given forth for our enlightenment and everlasting benefit. (1) The Lord is our righteousness, inasmuch as the purpose and plan of justifying sinners originated with Him. (2) The Lord is our righteousness, inasmuch as He Himself alone has procured righteousness for us. (3) The Lord is our righteousness, inasmuch as it is through His grace and by His free donation that we receive righteousness.

II. These words may be contemplated as the utterance of personal belief and confidence. Here we present to our minds the view of a body of persons who avow and proclaim that the Lord is their righteousness; and who know, reverence, and confide in God as thus apprehended. They have no confidence in the flesh, their trust is in God alone. They look not to works of charity, or self-denial, or penance, for acceptance with God; they ask only to be accepted in the beloved. They know in whom they have believed, and therefore they do not hesitate to stand up and avow before the world that all their trust and all their hope is in that worthy name, The Lord our Righteousness. In their lips this is the language (1) of faith; (2) of hope; (3) of joy and gratitude.

III. We may contemplate the text as a directory to the inquirer. Sinners are supposed to be anxious to know the way of acceptance with God. Conscious of guilt, they feel their need of a justifying righteousness in order that they may stand without blame before the moral Governor of the universe. With them, therefore, the foremost and most pressing question is, How may I, a sinner, be righteous before God? To such the words of my text give a brief but most satisfactory answer. They are a proclamation from God Himself, that in Him is the salvation of the sinner found. They direct the inquirer away from self, away from all creature help, away from all methods of personal or sacerdotal propitiation, and carry his thoughts to God—to God in Christ, as the sole Author and Bestower of righteousness. The Lord is our righteousness, and He alone. His voice to the lost and guilty sons of men is "Look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else."

W. Lindsay Alexander, Sermons, p. 66.

I. This verse teaches us that the Son of David and the King of Israel is the source of our righteousness, the exhibition and presentation of it before our consciences and unto the Father. Christ is to us the realisation of righteousness. It is no longer an unattainable conception of an abstract idea which we find it hard to grasp or to fulfil, but in Him it becomes a concrete fact on which we can lay hold, and a thing which we can appropriate and possess. He becomes first "righteousness," and then "our righteousness"—first the visible, incarnate, and realised exhibition of righteousness, and then something of which we can claim possession and in which we can participate.

II. If this is the obverse presentation or positive statement of the truth, it has also its reverse or negative side. If the name whereby Christ is called is "The Lord our Righteousness," that fact is destructive of all other hopes, prospects, or sources of righteousness; it gives the lie to them and asserts their vanity. No, we can have no righteousness but what we find in the Lord.

S. Leathes, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiv., p. 390.

References: Jeremiah 23:6.—J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, Part II., p. 430; Bishop Walsham How, Plain Words, p. 292; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii., No. 395; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 31; Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. vii., p. 261; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 152; S. Leathes, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 305; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, 2nd series, p. 460.

Jeremiah 23:28

I. The human dream is empty, but the Divine word is substantial. Chaff is a mere husk, but wheat is all grain. So the antagonists of the Bible deal in vague speculations or empty negations, whereas the Scriptures are positive and satisfying.

II. The human dream is destitute of nourishment for man's spiritual nature, while the Divine word is strengthening and ministers to its growth. Chaff does not feed, but wheat gives nutriment. So mere speculation has in it no educating and ennobling influence. It occupies the mind without strengthening the character. The man who indulges in it makes no progress, but, instead of flowing onward with the current, he is caught in some whirling eddy, round which he is continually revolving. But the Christian believer grows. His character is ever gaining new development. He never reaches his ideal, but still "follows after."

III. The human dream has no aggressiveness in it to arrest or overcome the evils that are in the world, but the Divine word is regenerating and reforming. "Is not My word like a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?"

IV. The human dream is shortlived, but the Divine word is enduring. Chaff is easily blown away, but the wheat remains. And so the "little systems" of human speculation "have their day, and cease to be;" but the word of the Lord endureth for ever. Like some impregnable fortress, in the hollows around which you may pick up specimens of the various missiles which from age to age have been hurled against it, whilst its walls remain unbroken; the Word of God has withstood for centuries the attacks of many successive armies of antagonists. There is deep truth in Beza's motto for the French Protestant Church, which surmounts the device of an anvil surrounded by blacksmiths, at whose feet are many broken hammers:

"Hammer away, ye hostile bands,

Your hammers break, God's anvil stands."

W. M. Taylor, Contrary Winds, p. 21.

References: Jeremiah 23:28.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv., No. 862. Jeremiah 23:29.—G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 202. Jeremiah 23:35.—J. Hiles Hitchens, Christian World Pulpit, vol, xvi., p. 394. Jeremiah 24:1-3.—T. G. Horton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 149. Jeremiah 24:7.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx., No. 1206. Jeremiah 26:4-6.—T. Binney, Good Words, 1861, p. 300.