Bible Commentaries

Jeremiah 48:11

The principle that underlies the text is this: that we require to be unsettled in life by many changes and interruptions of adversity, in order to be most effectually loosened from our own wills, and prepared to do the will and work of God.

Observe:—

I. How God manages, on a large scale, in the common matters of life, to keep us in a process of change, and prevent our lapsing into a state of security, such as we desire. Nature herself conspires to loosen all our calculations—meeting us with her frosts, her blastings, her droughts, her storms, her fevers; and forbidding us ever to be sure of that for which we labour. The very scheme of life appears to be itself a grand decanting process, where change follows change, and all are emptied from vessel to vessel.

II. The radical evil of human character, as being under sin, consists in a determination to have our own way; which determination must be somehow reduced and extirpated. Sin is but another name for self-direction. If we could stand on our lees, in continual peace and serenity—if success were made secure, subject to no change or surprise—what, on the other hand, should we do more certainly than stay by our evil mind, and take it as a matter of course that our will is to be done; the very thing above all others of which we most need to be cured?

III. Consider the fact that our evils are generally hidden from us till they are discovered to us by some kind of adversity. If God should let us be as Moab from our youth, then we should be as Moab in the loss of all valuable improvement.

IV. It is another point of advantage in the changes and surprises through which we are continually passing, that we are prepared, in this manner, for gracious and refining work of the Spirit in us.

V. Great quiet and security, long continued, are likely to allow the reaction or the recovered power of our old sins, and must not therefore be suffered. As the wine, standing on its dregs or lees contracts a taste from the lees, and must, therefore, be decanted or drawn off; so we, in like manner, need to be separated from everything appertaining to the former life, to be broken up in our expectations, and loosened from the affinities of our former habit.

H. Bushnell, The New Life, p. 392.

We may lay it down as a principle of universal application that a man needs to be frequently disturbed and displaced by the dispensations of God's providence, if he would grow in all the elements of that greatness which consists in holiness. To remain "at ease," to "settle on the lees," is fatal to spiritual advancement.

I. Consider what there is in these "emptyings" that fits them to promote our spiritual advancement. (1) It is obvious that such dispensations have in them an influence which is well calculated to reveal us to ourselves. It was a shrewd remark of Andrew Fuller, that "a man has only as much religion as he can command in the day of trial;" and if he have no religion at all, his trouble will make that manifest to him. (2) The frequent unsettlements which come upon us in God's providence have a tendency to shake us out of ourselves. The essence of sin is self-preference. We will take our own way rather than God's. We will make our own plans, as if only ourselves were to be consulted. Now, what a corrective to this idolatry of self is administered by these providential dispensations, which, coming as all such things do, unexpectedly, unsettle all our engagements, disarrange all our plans, and disappoint all our calculations. By many bitter failures we are made to acknowledge that "it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps," and then by the Spirit of God we are led up to confidence in Jehovah. (3) These frequent unsettlements have a tendency to keep us from being wedded to the world, or from thinking of rooting ourselves permanently here.

II. Notice the particular qualities of character which providential unsettlements are most calculated to foster. (1) Purity of motive and conduct. (2) Strength either for endurance or action. (3) Sympathy and charity.

W. M. Taylor, Limitations of Life, p. 358.

References: Jeremiah 48:11, Jeremiah 48:12.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiii., No. 761. Jeremiah 48:28.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. xi., p. 75. Jeremiah 49:8.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii., No. 1085. Jeremiah 49:23.—Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 253; J. B. Heard, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 241.