Bible Commentaries

Jeremiah 31:3

I. Divine love is a fact; there can be no doubt of the teaching of the Scripture on this subject. The God of the Bible is a God of love, He is a Father in heaven. He cares for us, He watches over us, He guides us, He saves us. This attitude of Divine love is the very core of the Gospel. It may be said to encounter two obstacles within us: our fears at times, and then, what seems the very opposite, our pride and self-confidence. (1) The instinct of conscious guilt is fear, and when the sense of sin is strongly awakened we are apt to turn away from God, and to feel as if God must hate us. But God never hates us. He hates our sins and will punish those sins. But in the very hatred of those sins there is the reality of Divine love. (2) Not only does our fear sometimes turn us away from the thought of God, but our self-sufficiency. We feel as if the powers of nature were strong in us, and the sense of sin dies down; we feel as if God would overlook our sins, and that we are not so sinful after all; we feel as if we might trust to His goodness, as if it were, so to speak, good nature. But this is equally inconsistent with true spiritual experience. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."

II. God not only loves us; He loves us everlastingly. The fact of Divine love is not only sure in itself, it is never uncertain in incidence. Whatever appearance there may seem to the contrary, it is still there. The voice of God is not still because man does not hear it, and the love of. God is not gone because man does not feel it. It is still crying to us; it abides as an everlasting fact. "Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love."

III. The love of God is individual; it is personal; it is the love of one loving heart to another; it is no mere impersonal conception of supreme benevolence; it is the love of a father to a child, the love of a mother to a daughter; it would not be love otherwise, for it is a distinguishing idea of love that it discriminates its object. "With lovingkindness have I drawn thee."

J. Tulloch, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 209.

References: Jeremiah 31:3.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiii., No. 1914; Ibid., Morning by Morning, pp. 60, 355; S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Pulpit, 5th series, No. vii.; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 153.

Jeremiah 31:12

I. A watered garden suggests the idea of fragrant freshness. The prophet was contrasting the weary, dusty, withered aspect of Israel during the exile, with the fresh, bright, happy look of a recovered and ransomed nation. The characters and lives of the people of God ought to be marked by a similar freshness. Godliness tends to keep the soul from withering, and replenishes the springs of the deepest life. There is a perennial freshness in unselfish affections and unworldly aims. The "eternal life" never grows old. It is selfishness that fatigues the spirit, and robs it of its freshness; but so long as a human soul is pervaded by the love of God and the love of man, the human life cannot, for that soul, altogether lose its zest.

II. A "watered garden" suggests the idea of a varied beauty. In a well-kept garden there is beauty of colour and of form; beauty of order and of tasteful arrangement; beauty of stem and leaf and flower; and amongst the flowers themselves a varied beauty, resulting from manifold varieties of form and colour. And even so the characters and lives of the people of God ought to be marked by that which is attractive and sweet to look upon. There is need that men be attracted by the "beauty of holiness." There are times when a man may get more good from the flowers of the garden than even from its fruits. The lovelier features of the Christian character have their own peculiar charm and peculiar power.

III. A watered garden suggests the idea of a rich fruitfulness. A gardener generally expects, not only flower and blossom, but also fruit, as the outcome of his toil. And certainly the lives of God's people ought to be marked by a fruitfulness which ministers to the welfare and happiness of humanity. Israel was placed under a special culture for the glory of God, and for the benefit of the nations. And "herein," says Christ to His disciples, "is My Father glorified that ye bear much fruit."

F. Campbell Finlayson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xii., p. 72.

References: Jeremiah 31:12.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 276. Jeremiah 31:15, Jeremiah 31:16.—W. Walters, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., No. 102. Jeremiah 31:16.—J. N. Norton, Golden Truths, p. 234.

Jeremiah 31:18

Compunctious visitings and repentant resolutions.

I. I will not enter now into what we may call the more exceptional regrets and remorses of sinful souls. Our Lord touches a different and a more thrilling chord when He makes the wanderer in His utmost destitution, think of the plenty of his home; compare what he might have been with what he is; and say, as he comes to himself, only just this, "How many hired servants of my father's have had enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger?" This is the compunction which I would have to visit us.

II. The Resolution. "I will arise and go to my Father." (1) Mark first how the repentant resolution speaks of God. "My Father." Happy is he, who, in his remotest exile, in his uttermost destitution, still speaks, still thinks, of God as his Father. (2) "I will arise." There is need of exertion. Sit still and thou art bound; sorry, but not contrite; miserable, but not repentant. There is a journey, though it be but in the soul's going, and therefore there must be a rising, a rousing of the whole man, like that, which, in the days of the Son of God below, enabled one whose hand was withered, yet, at the Divine command, to stand forth and stretch it out. (3) "I will go." Whither and how? (a) In prayer. The soul must arise and pray. Say, Father, I have sinned. Say it: He hears, (b) Go in effort. We must not trifle with or mock God, and therefore he who would pray must endeavour too. In particular, we must give up resolutely known sins. Give up your sin, is the first word of Christ to those who would return to their Father. (c) Go in the use of all means. God has furnished us with various means and instruments of access to Him. His Holy Word, public worship, Holy Communion. (d) "I will arise and go to my Father." We must get to Him somehow. If we do not get to God Himself, we have done nothing after all.

C. J. Vaughan, Voices of the Prophets, p. 291.

I. Human life is established upon a disciplinary basis.

II. The value of discipline depends upon its right acceptance.

III. Application. (1) There is a yoke in sin. (2) There is a yoke in goodness. God helps the true yoke-bearer.

Parker, City Temple, vol. i., p. 369; see also Pulpit Notes, p. 177.

References: Jeremiah 31:18.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii., No. 743. Jeremiah 31:29.—H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1645. Jeremiah 31:31-34.—A. B. Bruce, Expositor, 1st series, vol. x., p. 65.